Driven by strong IoT investment, revenues projected to grow at 16.1% CAGR from 2015 to 2019
U.S. investment into the “internet of things,” including hardware, software, services and connectivity spending is expected to hit $232 billion this year, according to a recent study by IDC. The research firm expects U.S. IoT revenues will grow at a 16.1% compound annual growth rate over the 2015-2019 period, reaching more than $357 billion in 2019.
Manufacturing and transport are the industries currently leading the way in U.S. IoT investment this year at $35.5 billion and $24.9 billion, respectively. IDC said IoT use cases receiving the greatest levels of investment from U.S. organizations across these three industry segments are manufacturing operations, which supports digitally-executed manufacturing; freight monitoring, which uses radio frequency identification, global positioning system, GPRS and GIS technologies to create an internet-connected transportation system; and smart buildings, which use automation and integration to measure, monitor, control, and optimize building operations and maintenance.
The next three largest IoT use cases in terms of U.S. revenue will be remote health management, smart grid and smart home. The IoT use cases expected to experience the greatest revenue growth in the U.S. over the 2015-2019 forecast period are in-store contextualized marketing, connected vehicles and insurance telematics.
“We see strong opportunities across many industries. For example, in highly instrumented verticals like manufacturing and transportation, large data sets are used to optimize operational processes and extend the life of high capital cost assets. In other sectors like healthcare and consumer, IoT technology is being used to produce benefits that improve quality of life,” said Marcus Torchia, research manager for IoT on IDC’s Customer Insights and Analysis team.
Global cellular M2M module shipments reached 96M in 2015
In related news, global cellular machine-to-machine module shipments increased by 19.4% in 2015 to 96 million units, according to a recent report by Sweden-based research firm Berg Insight.
According to the study, shipments of cellular M2M devices are forecasted to grow at a 21.7% CAGR to reach 256 million units in 2020. East Asia, North America and Western Europe were the main geographical markets in terms of cellular M2M module shipments last year, representing approximately 75% of the total demand.
According to Berg Insight, the latest 3GPP standards for LTE – Cat 1, Cat M1, and Cat M2 – will contribute substantially to growth in the next coming five years. These new standards are designed to be less complex to limit power consumption and are priced more favorably to address the mass market and make it viable to connect entirely new applications, the research firm said.
The report also showed the three largest module vendors have 72% of the market in terms of revenues.
“Annual module revenues for the three largest market players Sierra Wireless, Gemalto and Telit increased by 12.5% to $1.12 billion, with the total market value reaching approximately $1.6 billion,” said Berg CEO Johan Fagerberg.
