The number of IoT cellular connections is set to grow to around 2.4 billion by 2025, according to a report by Strategy Analytics.
The analysts said that almost half of connections (46 percent) will be for automotive, utilities and security. Automotive will remain the single largest global vertical.
Across the forecast period, the automotive vertical market will not only remain the single largest global consumer of IoT cellular connections, but it will increase its market share position by 2025.
“With the industry focusing on the path to 5G and low-power 3GPP offerings, such as LTE Cat M1 and NB-IoT, coupled with a variety of established connectivity platforms, there are lots of choices for cellular connectivity in IoT and the outlook has never been brighter,” said Andrew Brown, executive director of Enterprise and IoT Research at Strategy Analytics.
“However, the bewildering array of choices also runs the risk of creating confusion for customers with regard to which technologies should be employed in which use cases.”
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Compelling use cases
The report said that the increase in cellular connections underlines the importance of cellular networks in IoT, with networks not just being used to facilitate simple connections, but increasingly supporting rich data that will enable new and compelling use cases.
“Asia Pacific will remain the single largest region across the forecast period, accounting for almost 1 billion connections in 2025,” added Matt Wilkins, senior analyst in IoT sesearch at Strategy Analytics, “with the top three regions (Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe) together accounting for over 75 percent of global cellular IoT connections in 2025.”
Appal Chintapalli, vice president of integrated rack systems in EMEA at infrastructure specialise Vertiv, told Internet of Business that businesses building mobile-first strategies will continue to increase, causing a greater need for processing data at the edge of the network.
“What’s more, the success of IoT is becoming ever increasingly dependent on edge computing – without local data processing power, connected devices will not reach their full potential. Edge computing will be instrumental in creating a future where IoT is mainstream in smart homes, smart cities and industry 4.0,” he said.
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