Berg Insight: Global IoT cellular connectivity to grow 22% in 2021.
says that global cellular IoT connections will grow by an impressive 22 percent by 2021.

According to the company’s analysts, global cellular IoT reached 2.1 billion last year.

No particular region stands out for growth. Major regional markets in China, Western Europe, and North America grew evenly throughout the year as the world recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, China continues to lead in mobile IoT connectivity. China Mobile remains the world’s largest mobile IoT connectivity service provider with an estimated 801 million mobile IoT connections. China Unicom and China Telecom are in second and third place with 300 million and 297 million connections respectively.

Among Western operators, Vodafone leads with 142 million connections, followed by AT& T with 95 million.

Deutsche Telekom and Verizon each have 45-55 million mobile IoT connections (including T-Mobile US customers as part of DT’s IoT subscriber base.)

Telefónica, KDDI, and Orange rounded out the top ten with 31 million, 23 million, and 20 million connections, respectively.

By 2026, Berg Insight now predicts that 4.3 billion IoT devices will be connected to cellular networks worldwide.