eSIM Connections to Reach 1.5 Billion in 2026

A new study by Juniper Research has found that the number of devices using eSIMs will grow by 30% in 2026, rising from 1.2 billion in 2025. As the GSMA’s SGP.32 standard, launched in 2025, gains traction across the IoT, Juniper Research forecasts that connected logistics, oil & gas, and smart street lighting will be the fastest-growing IoT eSIM sectors in 2026.

In turn, Juniper Research believes that these industries will benefit the most from the standard in 2026, contributing a combined 75 million new eSIM connections. The biggest challenge for eSIM platforms is pivoting away from pull models (in which the device pulls a single profile to itself) to a push model, where profiles are pushed to multiple devices simultaneously. Juniper Research urges these platforms to develop their own push model to serve enterprise eSIM users as enterprise IoT adoption proliferates.

“Enterprise users demand a completely different set of requirements; most notably, a server-driven approach that enables centralised orchestration of deployments. For enterprise IoT users, it is inefficient to use a pull model to provision so many devices, and eSIM platforms must adapt,” explained Ardit Ballhysa, Senior Research Analyst at Juniper Research.