A new report from the IoT market research firm Berg Insight says that global IoT connectivity revenues increased 12 percent to reach € 14.2 billion in 2024. The monthly ARPU dropped 5 percent to € 0.33. IoT connectivity revenues account for 1–4 percent of service revenues for the largest mobile operator groups. By 2029, Berg Insight projects that there will be 6.4 billion IoT devices connected to cellular networks worldwide, generating annual connectivity revenues of € 22.4 billion.
The top ten mobile operators reported a combined active base of 3.3 billion cellular IoT connections at the end of 2024, accounting for 86 percent o f the total 3.8 billion connections. China Mobile is the world’s largest provider of cellular IoT connectivity services with 1.42 billion cellular IoT connections. China Telecom and China Unicom ranked second and third with 628 million and 625 million connections respectively.
Vodafone ranked first among the Western operators and fourth overall with 204 million connections, followed by AT&T with 143 million in fifth place. Deutsche Telekom and Verizon had in the range of 56–60 million cellular IoT connections each. KDDI, Telefónica and Orange were the last players in the top ten with about 49 million, 45 million and 37 million connections respectively. The installed bases of the largest mobile operators grew at a rate of 5–26 percent annually.
IoT managed service providers play a key role in the ecosystem. Most players operate as full MVNOs, typically offering IoT connectivity services based on a mix of roaming and local access agreements and sometimes also value-added services targeted at vertical segments. Notable examples include 1GLOBAL, 1NCE, Aeris, BICS, CSL Group, Cubic, emnify, Eseye, floLIVE, Giesecke+Devrient, KORE, Monogoto, Onomondo, Semtech, Soracom, Tata Communications, Teal, Telit Cinterion, Velos IoT and Wireless Logic. Altogether, IoT managed service providers had more than 200 million cellular IoT connections under management at the end of 2024 and around € 1.8 billion in annual revenues.
