Cellular IoT Market Update 2026: Connections Grew 13% in 2025, Slowest Since 2020

Global cellular IoT connections reached 4.7 billion in 2025, marking a 13.3% year-over-year increase that represents the market's slowest growth rate since 2020. This deceleration is primarily attributed to a slowdown in China, which transitioned from a primary growth engine to a laggard during the period. Despite the cooling pace, the sector remains a vital component of the broader ecosystem, accounting for 22% of the 21.1 billion total IoT connections worldwide.

In 2025, the cellular IoT landscape reached 4.7 billion connections, generating $20.8 billion in revenue for mobile network operators. While NB-IoT maintained its position as the leading technology, followed by LTE-Cat 1 bis and 4G, the 13.3% growth rate was the second-lowest since tracking began in 2010. Market dominance remains concentrated, with the top five operators managing over 60% of global connectivity revenue; China Mobile leads this group with a 17% share, while Quectel and Qualcomm continue to head the module shipment and chipset supply segments, respectively.

The market is currently entering a two-track growth phase where different technologies serve distinct economic tiers. Volume is driven by cost-sensitive applications like metering and basic monitoring using NB-IoT and LTE Cat 1 bis. Conversely, the premium revenue pool is being shaped by the adoption of 5G, 5G RedCap, and 5G eRedCap, which offer the higher bandwidth and lower latency required for sophisticated enterprise devices. This evolution reflects a broader shift toward more compute-capable hardware at the edge of the network.

Looking toward 2030, IoT Analytics forecasts that cellular IoT connections will surpass 9 billion, supported by a 14.3% compound annual growth rate starting in 2026. The next wave of industry expansion is expected to move beyond simple connectivity, focusing instead on local processing, enhanced security, and AI inference at the device level to minimize cloud dependency. This transition is likely to trigger a hardware upgrade cycle across modules and chipsets, favoring vendors that can integrate edge computing and power efficiency with complex regulatory and certification requirements.