IoT eSIM connections are expected to grow 43% annually between 2023 and 2030.
New GSMA standards for IoT eSIM are expected to accelerate the adoption of eSIM in IoT as constrained devices benefit from new standards.
China lags in eSIM adoption despite being the largest IoT market in terms of connections.

IoT connections on eSIM are expected to grow at a rapid pace of 43% annually to reach 2.2 billion by 2030, according to a recent report released by Counterpoint Research on the IoT connectivity landscape.

By 2030, almost a third of the IoT connections will be on eSIM or iSIM.

Commenting on the current state of IoT eSIM connections, Associate Director Mohit Agrawal said, “eSIM growth in IoT has lagged behind that in consumer space due to the restrictive M2M eSIM specifications. As a result, at the end of 2023, there were a little less than 200 million eSIM connections in the IoT space despite the excellent product-market fit.”

Agrawal added, “China, the world’s largest IoT market, has low single-digit eSIM penetration due to restrictive regulations around eSIM in the past and the high proportion of LPWA devices which currently do not support eSIM. The eSIM penetration in the rest of the world is much higher than in China but the large IoT base in China brings the overall global eSIM penetration to less than 10%.”

Commenting on the eSIM forecast, Senior Research Analyst Ankit Malhotra said,

“The new GSMA standards for IoT eSIM (SGD.31/32) are expected to bring the eSIM to constrained devices, which is likely to massively push the growth in eSIM and later iSIM.”

“eSIM vendors and IoT connectivity providers have multiple proof of concepts on the new IoT eSIM standards and the big push is likely to happen next year after the test specifications are released by GSMA later this year. The early adopters of eSIM in IoT have been mostly automotive customers as the enterprises have not really been able to change the connectivity provider at will.”

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