Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘5G’

Oct 15

Gartner’s $953B IoT forecast puts 81% of spending in endpoints and the fastest growth in software

Gartner IoT market opportunity forecast 2024 to 2030 rising from $620.9 billion to $953.3 billion, stacked by endpoint electronics, communication services, services, infrastructure software, application software and security, with six KPI tiles for 2026 and 2030 totals, new spending, application software growth, 5G growth and the 2028 revision
IoT market opportunity reaches $953.3B by 2030, with endpoint electronics carrying 81% of it. Click any chart to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00858825, Sept. 25, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

The new Gartner IoT forecast puts four out of every five dollars in devices, and the fastest growth in the software that runs them.

Published September 25, the forecast sizes the worldwide IoT market opportunity at $736.6 billion in 2026, up 9.6%, and $953.3 billion by 2030. That is a 7.2% compound annual growth rate from 2025 through 2030, landing just under $1 trillion.

Endpoint electronics account for $769.2 billion of the 2030 total, or 80.7%. Application software grows at 20.4% a year and infrastructure software at 14.8%. Together, the two software segments compound at 16.3%, 2.3 times the market.

The trillion-dollar mark also moved. Gartner’s previous edition, published in June 2024, put the 2028 market at $990.5 billion. The new edition puts 2028 at $850.3 billion, a $140.2 billion reduction, and does not cross $1 trillion before 2030.

I built this analysis from Gartner’s forecast report (G00858825) and the full detailed dataset behind it: 73,493 rows covering 6 technology segments, 28 subsegments, 12 sectors, 47 use cases, 9 regions and 7 years.

Each bar in the hero chart stacks Gartner’s six technology segments in current U.S. dollars. Navy is endpoint electronics, mid-blue is communication services, sky blue is services, teal is infrastructure software, purple is application software and red is security. Italic figures above each bar give year-over-year growth.

Six tiles underneath carry the 2026 and 2030 totals, the $281.0 billion in new spending between 2025 and 2030, the application software growth rate, the 5G growth rate and the 2028 revision against the 2024 edition.
Read more

Jul 7

Customer Experiences Define Success In A Digital-First World

Customer Experiences Define Success In A Digital-First World

  • 91% of enterprises have adopted or have plans to adopt a digital-first strategy. Of these enterprises, 48% already have a digital-first approach in place.
  • Creating better customer experiences (67%), improving process efficiency through automation (53%), and driving new revenue (48%) are the top three digital business strategies enterprises are investing in today.
  • 35% of enterprises have experienced revenue growth due to digital business initiatives over the past 12 months.
  • 5G, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning are the top technologies being researched by enterprises who are defining digital business strategies.
  • Enterprises are planning to spend $15.3M on digital initiatives over the next 12 months. 59% will be allocated to technology, and 41% will be dedicated to people and skills.

These and many other fascinating insights are from the second annual IDG Digital Business study, The State of Digital Business Transformation 2019. You can download a summary of the slides here (7 pp., PDF, opt-in). The survey’s methodology is based on 702 interviews across nine industries with technology, financial services, and business services (consulting, legal and real estate) comprising 43% of all respondents. IDG relied on CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World visitors as their primary respondent base. For additional details regarding the methodology, please see page 2 of the study.

The study’s primary goal was to gain a better understanding of where organizations are in their approaches to becoming digital-first businesses. The study captures the strategies and technologies businesses are adopting to ensure digitally-driven growth with customer experience improvements being proven as a growth catalyst. Key insights from the survey include the following:

  • 52% of enterprises define digital business as meeting Customer experience expectations, jumping to 65% for financial services enterprises. Customer expectations rule all other categories of how an enterprise defines a digital business. 49% define digital business as enabling worker productivity with mobile apps, data access, and AI-assisted automation. The following graphic compares how enterprises define their digital business. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

Customer Experiences Define Success In A Digital-First World

  • Mobile devices and apps are enterprises’ platform of choice for launching digital-first strategies in 2019. Mobile apps and the platforms supporting them provide the needed scale, speed-to-market, and performance gains through application-level improvements that all businesses need to gain initial adoption and growth with their digital-first strategies. IDG found that private cloud and business process management are the second- and third-most used technologies to drive digital-first initiatives. Enterprises also have a considerable lead when it comes to mobile app availability: 74% have mobile apps today compared to 51% of SMBs.

  • Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are the leading three initiatives enterprises have in pilot today as part of their digital-first initiatives. 21% of all organizations surveyed are in one or more IoT pilots, and 20% of organizations are piloting AI and machine learning projects today. Nearly a third of all organizations (29%) have multi-cloud configurations in production today, and 25% have software-defined Wide Area Networks (WANs).

  • 57% of enterprises (companies with over 1K employees) say improving new product and service offerings by digitally enabling operations is the single greatest source of revenue growth. Digitally enabling or streamlining new product and development processes and the systems supporting them also improve the ability to innovate and size new opportunities (49%). It makes sense that once the new product development process is more digitally enabled, an organization will be able to more efficiently launch new capabilities (47% in enterprises) and improve sales capacity including upsell and cross-sell (41% overall).

  • Creating better customer experiences (67%), improving process efficiency through automation (53%), and driving new revenue (48%) are the top three digital business strategies enterprises are investing in today. Business Management, including General Managers with P&L responsibility, are placing a high priority on creating a better customer experience, far above all else. They’re the revenue drivers of businesses adopting a digital-first strategy today as well, over 10% higher than IT Management and 12% higher than IT executives.

  • In the most successful digital-first businesses, the CIO the most visible, vocal, and successful in leading change management initiatives. Six of the nine core dimensions of a successful digital enablement strategy are dominated by CIOs. Technology Needs Assessment (48%), IT Skills Assessment (48%) and Change Management (33%) are the three areas CIOs are making the greatest contribution to digital-first strategies on the part of their businesses. It’s important to note that CIOs are far and away, the champion and leader of data management strategies as well.

  • Enterprises are placing a high priority on data security and protection as part of the digital-first initiatives, with 27% having cybersecurity systems in place. It’s encouraging to see business and IT leaders making data and system security their highest priority, getting results quickly in this area. Technology needs assessment, and IT skills assessment (both 24%) are also areas where enterprises are making strong progress. As the CIO owns these areas and is also the person most likely to be owning change management, it’s understandable how advanced digital-first businesses are on these two dimensions. The following graphic compares the progress enterprises are making in becoming a digitally-driven business.

Mar 3

Vodafone’s 2019 IoT Barometer Reflects Robust Growth In The Enterprise

  • 85% of enterprises who develop deep expertise with IoT succeed at driving revenue faster than competitors.
  • 81% of enterprises say Artificial Intelligence streamlines interpreting and taking action on data insights gained from IoT systems and sensors.
  • 68% of enterprises are using IoT to track the security of physical assets, making this use case the most common across enterprises today.
  • Transport & Logistics and Manufacturing & Industrials saw the most significant increase in adoption between 2018 and 2019.

These and many other fascinating insights are from the 6th annual Vodafone IoT Barometer, 2019.  The entire report can be downloaded here (PDF, 32 pp., e-mail opt-in). The methodology is based on 1,758 interviews distributed across the Americas (22%), EMEA (49%) and Asia-Pacific (29%). Eight vertical markets were included with manufacturing (22%), healthcare and wellness (14%) and retail, leisure, and hospitality (14%) being the three most represented markets.  Vodaphone is making an interactive tool available here for exploring the results.

Key insights from Vodafone’s 2019 IoT Barometer include the following:

  • 34% of global businesses are now using IoT in daily operations, up from 29% in 2018, with 95% of IoT adopters are already seeing measurable benefits. 81% of IoT adopters say their reliance on IoT has grown, and 76% of adopters say IoT is mission-critical to them. 58% are using analytics platforms to get more insights from their IoT data to improve decision making. 71% of enterprises who have adopted IoT expect their company and others like them will start listing data resources on their balance sheets as assets within five years.

  • 95% of enterprises adopting IoT are achieving tangible benefits and positive ROI. 52% of enterprises report significant returns on their IoT investments. 79% say IoT is enabling positive outcomes that would have been impossible without it, further reflecting robust growth in the enterprise. Across all eight vertical markets reducing operating costs (53%) and gaining more accurate data and insights (48%) are the most common benefits. Transitioning an IoT pilot to production based on cost reduction and improved visibility creates a compelling ROI for many enterprises. The following graphic compares IoT’s benefits to enterprises. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

  • Transport & Logistics and Manufacturing & Industrials saw the greatest increase in adoption between 2018 and 2019. Transport and Logistics had the highest IoT adoption rate at 42% followed by Manufacturing and Industrials at 39%. Manufacturers are facing the challenges of improving production efficiency and product quality while accelerating time-to-market for next-generation smart, connected products. IoT contributes to productivity improvements and creates opportunities for services-based business models, two high priorities for manufacturers in 2019 and beyond.  The following graphic from the interactive tool compares IoT adoption by industry based on Vodaphone’s IoT barometer data over the last six years:

  • 89% of most sophisticated enterprises have multiple full-scale projects in production, orchestrating IoT with analytics, AI and cloud, creating a technology stack that delivers real-time insights. Enterprises who lead IoT adoption in their industries rely on integration to gain scale and speed advantages quickly over competitors. The greater the real-time integration, the greater the potential to digitally transform an enterprise and remove roadblocks that get in the way of growing. 95% of adopters where IoT is fully integrated say it’s enabling their digital transformation, compared with 55% that haven’t started integration. The following graphics reflect how integrated enterprises’ IoT projects are with existing business systems and processes and the extent to which enterprises agree that IoT is enabling digital transformation.

  • 68% of enterprises are using IoT to track the security of physical assets, making this use case the most common across enterprises today. 57% of all enterprises are using IoT to manage risk and compliance. 53% are using it to increase revenue and cut costs, with 82% of high performing enterprises rely on IoT to manage risk and compliance. The following graphic compares the types of variables enterprises are using IoT to track today and plan to in the future.

  • IoT adoption is soaring in Americas-based enterprises, jumping from 27% in 2018 to 40% in 2019. The Americas region leads the world in terms of IoT usage assessed by strategy, integration, and implementation of IoT deployments. 73% of Americas-based enterprises are the most likely to report significant returns from their IoT investments compared to 47% for Asia-Pacific (APAC) and 45% for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
  • 52% of IoT-enabled enterprises plan to use 5G when it becomes available. Enterprises are looking forward to 5G’s many advantages including improved security via stronger encryption, more credentialing options, greater quality of service management, more specialized services and near-zero latency. Vodafone predicts 5G will be a strong catalyst of growth for emerging IoT applications including connected cars, smart cities, eHealth and industrial automation.