A study from internet of things (IoT) market research firm Berg Insight has shown that the IoT arena has been growing strongly over the past year, showing annual shipments of cellular IoT modules amounted to 514 million units in 2024, up 22% from the previous year, driving annual sales to increase by 13% to US$6bn.
The study, the findings of which are presented in the Cellular and LPWA IoT device ecosystems research report, focused on the most prominent technology ecosystems for wide area IoT networking – the 3GPP ecosystem of cellular technologies and LPWA technologies LoRa and Sigfox – as well as a group of emerging LPWA technologies including IEEE 802.15.4-based protocols, Wirepas Mesh, DECT-2020 NR (NR+) and Mioty.
Fundamentally, Berg found that the cellular IoT market was highly diverse and divided into multiple ecosystems. The 3GPP family of cellular technologies supported the largest ecosystem in wide area IoT networking. Berg Insight calculated that the number of global cellular IoT subscribers amounted to 3.8 billion at the end of 2024, corresponding to 30% of all mobile subscribers.
Yearly shipments of cellular IoT modules amounted to 514 million units in 2024, up 22% year on year. Shipments of cellular IoT modules are forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11% to reach 866 million units by 2029.
The five largest cellular module suppliers – Quectel, Fibocom, Telit Cinterion, Rolling Wireless and MeiG – held a collective market share of 71% in terms of revenues. Qualcomm, ASR Microelectronics and Unisoc are the main cellular IoT chipset suppliers. Other cellular IoT chipset providers of note in the report include Eigencomm, MediaTek, Sony and Xinyi Information Technology.
Looking at the key technology sub-sectors, IoT-optimised 4G LTE technologies were shown to dominate the cellular IoT technology landscape as LTE Cat-1/LTE Cat-1 bis, NBIoT and LTE-M replace 2G and 3G technologies in the low- to mid-market segments. LTE Cat-4 and higher Cat LTE-A technologies remained the main alternative for high-speed IoT devices, but the analysis predicts that, over time, these will be replaced by 5G as network coverage and pricing improve.
The study also revealed that 5G IoT devices are currently largely concentrated to FWA CPEs, IoT routers, as well as cars from front-running automotive manufacturers. Berg predicts that 5G RedCap modules will, in time, enable a broader set of 5G IoT use cases. The analyst expects uptake of the technology to be limited in the short term due to the price gap between 4G LTE Cat-4/6 modules and 5G standalone (SA) network coverage requirements.
LoRa was seen to be gaining momentum as a global connectivity platform for IoT devices. Cumulative shipments of LoRa end nodes reached 410 million at the beginning of 2025. Most demand in this sector was found to be coming from devices deployed in private networks, which remained the dominant deployment model for LoRa networks.
Major volume application segments are smart meters for gas and water, where LoRa’s low-power consumption matches the requirements for long-life battery operation. The technology is also widely used in metropolitan and local area IoT deployments for networking of smart sensors and tracking devices in cities, industrial plants and commercial buildings. The smart home is expected to become a major application area in the coming years, driven by Amazon’s Sidewalk network in the US.
Berg Insight estimates that yearly shipments of LoRa devices amounted to 60 million units in 2024. To 2029, yearly shipments are forecast to grow at a CAGR of 16.5% to reach 129 million units.