2.2 Billion IoT Connections Expected to be on eSIM by 2030

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

“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,” said Mohit Agrawal, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research.“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 that 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%.”

“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,” said Ankit Malhotra, Senior Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research.