Cellular IoT Hits 21% of All Connections, Growing at Double Overall IoT Rate

Cellular IoT Captures Fifth of Global Connections

Cellular IoT accounted for 21% of the 16.6 billion connected IoT devices at the end of 2023, according to IoT Analytics' June 2024 State of IoT report. More important for enterprise buyers: cellular IoT connections grew 24% year-over-year, roughly double the 15% growth rate of overall IoT connections.

The 21% figure aggregates devices running 3GPP standards—NB‑IoT, LTE‑M (Cat‑M1), and 4G/5G IoT profiles. This growth rate signals that enterprises deploying asset trackers, industrial sensors, or smart meters face a narrowing set of safe connectivity choices. Proprietary low‑power wide‑area networks such as Sigfox and LoRaWAN are being pushed into niche roles where operators control deployment roadmaps.

IoT Analytics forecasts 18.8 billion total IoT devices by the end of 2024 and 40 billion by 2030. If cellular IoT maintains its current growth differential, it will represent more than a quarter of all IoT connections within three years.

NB‑IoT and LTE‑M Become Default LPWA Standards

The shift toward cellular LPWA directly follows 2G and 3G network sunsets. Carriers in North America, Europe, and parts of Asia have either completed or scheduled shutdowns of legacy networks, forcing enterprises to migrate devices with 8‑ to 10‑year lifetimes onto NB‑IoT, LTE‑M, or 5G RedCap.

This migration creates a split in LPWA purchasing patterns. Enterprises requiring carrier‑grade roaming and multi‑country deployments are standardizing on 3GPP LPWA. Buyers who control private networks and want to avoid SIM dependencies still choose LoRaWAN, but that subset is shrinking as a share of new deployments in smart metering, logistics tracking, and industrial telematics—the three fastest‑growing cellular IoT segments.

The trade‑off is straightforward: cellular LPWA shifts cost from capital expenditure on private RF infrastructure to recurring operational expenditure on SIM connectivity. For global fleets, that trade eliminates the cost of maintaining in‑house RF network operations across multiple countries. For local deployments with full IT control, LoRaWAN still offers lower per‑device cost.

Enterprise IoT Overtakes Consumer Connections

Enterprise IoT reached 13 billion connections in 2025, surpassing the 11 billion consumer IoT connections for the first time, according to Market.us data synthesized in January 2025. GSMA Intelligence projects enterprise IoT will account for 65% of all IoT connections by 2030 and 69% by 2035, driven by smart manufacturing, smart cities, and smart utilities.

This shift changes protocol requirements. Consumer IoT leans heavily on Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth for home automation and wearables. Enterprise IoT requires industrial Ethernet with Time‑Sensitive Networking for factories, cellular LPWA for distributed sensors, and fieldbus‑to‑IP gateways (Modbus/TCP, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP) to integrate legacy operational technology.

The consequence for buyers: RFPs must now specify multi‑protocol support. A single industrial device may need to support NB‑IoT for field deployment, Wi‑Fi for commissioning, and Ethernet for factory‑floor integration. Vendors offering only Wi‑Fi or only cellular connectivity cannot address the full enterprise use case.

Implications for Procurement and Vendor Selection

The 24% cellular IoT growth rate and the enterprise majority create three immediate procurement changes:

First, buyers can now exclude 2G‑only modules from RFPs without limiting the vendor pool. Module suppliers including Quectel, Telit Cinterion, u‑blox, and Fibocom all offer multi‑RAT modules supporting LTE, NB‑IoT, and LTE‑M. Requiring multi‑RAT support in 2025 is no longer a niche ask.

Second, connectivity budgets must account for rising recurring costs. The shift from 15% to 21% cellular share in two years means enterprises are adding 1.5 to 2 percentage points of cellular IoT share annually. Each percentage point represents roughly 200 million devices by 2025 scale, each carrying a monthly SIM cost. Finance teams used to capex‑heavy IoT budgets need to model higher ongoing connectivity opex.

Third, managed connectivity platforms become more defensible. The Market.us data highlights integration challenges, security risks, and skill shortages as top enterprise IoT barriers. Platforms from AWS IoT, Azure IoT, specialist providers such as Particle and Soracom, or MNO‑driven offerings such as Vodafone IoT and AT&T Control Center abstract protocol complexity and provide unified device management across multi‑protocol fleets. The business case for these platforms strengthens as enterprises deploy more device types across more geographies.

What to Watch

Track 5G RedCap (Reduced Capability) module availability through 2025. RedCap targets the gap between NB‑IoT/LTE‑M and full 5G, offering higher throughput than LPWA at lower cost and complexity than standard 5G. If RedCap module pricing falls below $15 by late 2025, it will compress the middle of the cellular IoT market and force another round of design‑in decisions.

Monitor MNO pricing for multi‑year IoT SIM contracts. The 24% connection growth gives carriers pricing power, but competition among IoT‑MVNOs such as 1NCE and Wireless Logic may hold pricing flat. Buyers negotiating 5‑ to 10‑year connectivity deals in 2025 should benchmark against both MNOs and MVNOs to capture any arbitrage before volume growth closes the gap.