Skip to main content

Global Upside for IoT and M2M Software Applications

Cellular wireless Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) connections will increase nearly fourfold globally from 252 million in 2014 to 908 million in 2019, according to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research.

This significant increase in active cellular IoT or M2M connections will be driven by a number of key factors. First, hardware and bandwidth costs have dropped to a point where nearly every enterprise can reap the benefits of virtualizing the physical world.

Second, cloud-based open source middleware software and data platforms are making it easier to securely generate insights from machine data at greater scale than ever before possible.

Last, the growing interest is generating awareness of the transformational potential of IoT or M2M in terms of return on investment, competitiveness and support of completely new business models.

"We continue to be bullish that ultimately the hype of IoT will be proven to be warranted back on business impact," said Brian Partridge, research vice president at 451 Research.

The building excitement about what is possible has generated a massive amount of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity to support position taking for the next decade of IoT-driven digital business transformation.


IoT and M2M Application Market Development

According to the 451 Research assessment, connected passenger vehicles and connected energy will pace the market in terms of connection volume, while emerging solutions such as 'pay as you drive' insurance will grow the fastest.

"Over the forecast period we expect that M2M and IoT solution suppliers will find fertile ground in vertical markets such as retail and government that will adopt this technology to enable strategic digitization strategies such as smart cities and the use of digital signage, mobile point of sale, and connected kiosks to drive the transformation from brick and mortar to click and mortar," added Partridge.

As part of the IoT research, 451 also released data from another related market study. Key findings showed that 39 percent of U.S. IT decision-makers at companies that use or plan to use wearable technologies will deploy solutions in the next six months.

Twenty-four percent plan to deploy in the next 12 months. In addition, 81 percent of U.S. IT decision-makers who say their company plans to deploy wearables in the next six months will favor smart watches.

451 said they now expect wearable technology to deliver a key interface and input into the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In fact, wearables have the potential to become a primary interface for IIoT access.

Popular posts from this blog

The Billions Bet on Tentative AI Demand

Gartner's latest worldwide IT spending forecast exposes a trend every CIO has already felt in budget negotiations. Total spending will climb 14.2 percent in 2026, reaching $6.37 trillion. It seems that the IT infrastructure market is simply having a strong year. However, the more useful insight is how unevenly that growth is distributed. The Headline Number vs. The Real Story Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are absorbing capital at a pace several multiples faster than devices, communications services, and traditional IT services. This is not incremental growth spread across a healthy portfolio. It is a wholesale reallocation of enterprise technology budgets toward AI infrastructure, made on the expectation that demand for AI workloads will justify the outlay before that demand has been fully proven. Where the Money is Going Data center systems are forecast to grow 62.5 percent in 2026, that's up from 51.6 percent growth in 2025, reaching $822 billion....