The value of the cellular IoT market will reach $61 billion by 2026 against $31 billion in 2022 – driven by growth of 5G and cellular LPWA (Low-power Wide Area) technologies, a study from Juniper Research said.
LPWA solutions, such as NB-IoT and LTE-M, will be the fastest-growing cellular IoT technologies over the next four years. Low cost of both connectivity and hardware will drive adoption for remote monitoring in key verticals, such as agriculture, smart cities and manufacturing.

The report urged operators to migrate IoT connections on legacy networks to networks that support LPWA technologies. Demand from enterprises for low-cost monitoring technologies, enabled by LPWA networks, will increase as these legacy networks are shut off over the next four years.

“Operators must educate users on the suitability of LPWA as a replacement technology for legacy networks. Many IoT networks cannot solely rely on LPWA technologies. More technologies, such as 5G, must underpin IoT network architectures and work in tandem with LPWA technologies to maximise the value of IoT services,” Research co-author Charles Bowman said.

5G IoT services will generate $9 billion of revenue by 2026 against $800 million in 2021. Operators need to offer value-added services, such as network slicing and edge computing, to IoT users to maximize the value of 5G adoption.