Cellular IoT is hitting an inflection point. New research from Transforma Insights forecasts that the GSMA's SGP.32 remote SIM provisioning standard will account for 53 percent of all cellular IoT device shipments by 2035, up from a negligible base today. At the same time, veterans of large-scale IoT rollouts are warning that the technology is no longer the bottleneck — operational discipline is.
The Connectivity Layer Is Finally Standardizing
For years, cellular IoT deployments have wrestled with a fragmented provisioning environment. The GSMA maintains three remote SIM provisioning standards: SGP.02 for traditional machine-to-machine, SGP.22 for consumer devices with screens, and SGP.32 purpose-built for IoT. Transforma Insights' updated forecast, published August 5, shows SGP.32 overtaking SGP.02 in annual shipments during 2027 and becoming the majority of all cellular IoT shipments from 2034 onward.
"Enterprise customer demand levels are very high," said Matt Hatton, founding partner at Transforma Insights. "Even if there might be some vagueness about what specific capabilities they might want to use or role to perform."
The numbers are striking. Annual shipments of devices capable of standards-based remote SIM provisioning will climb from 88 million in 2025 to 642 million in 2035. RSP capability overall grows from 19 percent of cellular IoT shipments to 57 percent. SGP.32 alone reaches nearly 600 million units annually by the end of the forecast period.
The methodology behind the forecast is worth noting. Rather than assuming universal adoption, Transforma analysts assessed 164 distinct cellular IoT applications drawn from 270 total use cases. They evaluated each application against criteria including international deployment scope, device lifetime, coverage requirements, data usage, power constraints, user interaction, and radio technology. Adoption of SGP.32 is forecast to be highest among higher-bandwidth 5G deployments, while NB-IoT and other low-bandwidth mMTC technologies adopt more slowly.
Commercially, the implications extend beyond shipment counts. Although RSP-capable devices will represent 57 percent of shipments by 2035, those applications will generate more than 70 percent of cellular IoT "Value Added Connectivity" revenue. Higher-value enterprise and automotive deployments place greater premium on flexible connectivity management throughout a device's operational life.
The report also revisits assumptions from Transforma's 2023 outlook, when commercial deployment of SGP.32 was expected much earlier than ultimately proved to be the case. With fully standards-compliant solutions now entering the market during 2026, the analyst firm has recalibrated its timeline. SGP.02, originally developed for traditional machine-to-machine deployments, declines steadily as new deployments increasingly adopt SGP.32, though its installed base will remain substantial for many years because of the long operational lives of connected vehicles. SGP.22, developed for consumer devices with interfaces capable of supporting manual profile management, continues to expand gradually but remains specialized at roughly 3 percent of cellular IoT shipments by 2035.
From Pilot to Production: The Operational Reality Check
Standardizing the connectivity layer solves one problem. Scaling the deployment solves another — and it's the one that keeps operations teams awake.
Ilan Gluck, EVP and Head of GTM for North America at Digital Matter, has watched organizations struggle with this transition. "Pilots succeed because they're controlled," Gluck told IoT Business News in an August 7 interview. "The number of assets is manageable, the people involved are engaged, and it's relatively easy to respond to every alert or exception."
The trouble starts when that same deployment expands across hundreds or thousands of assets, dozens of locations, and multiple teams. "As that complexity grows, technology alone isn't enough to keep a deployment moving forward," Gluck said. "Organizations need clear ownership, repeatable processes, and teams that know how to respond to the information being generated."
Gluck described a pattern he sees repeatedly. A pilot works because a handful of engaged people make it work through sheer attention. Someone checks the dashboard every morning. Someone follows up when a pallet sits too long in a staging area. That holds at five sites, maybe ten. But by the time you're managing hundreds of sites, those manual habits collapse.
"The clearest sign is when the technology is working perfectly, and nothing downstream is changing," Gluck said. "When the same problems keep showing up week after week, it usually means the data isn't reaching the people who can act on it, or no one has defined what 'acting on it' looks like."
Another red flag: uneven adoption across near-identical locations. If one site changes how it operates because of the data and a nearly identical site down the road ignores it, that's a process and accountability gap — not a technology one, and it gets more expensive the longer it goes unaddressed.
Companies often assume that more visibility automatically leads to better decisions. Gluck pushes back on that. "Visibility answers what happened. It doesn't automatically answer who needs to respond or what should happen next." He gives the example of a pallet that never made it onto a trailer. Detecting that it's sitting in a staging area is valuable, but unless someone is responsible for investigating and resolving that exception, the alert doesn't change the outcome. Adding more sensors doesn't solve that problem; it just creates more information. Data only creates value when it's tied to clear ownership, defined workflows, and people who are expected to act on it.
Three Groups, One Initiative
Who owns the fix? Gluck argues it requires three groups working in concert, and deployments that stall are usually missing one of them.
IT enables the deployment by integrating the technology and ensuring reliable data flows. Operations determines how that information gets incorporated into day-to-day decision-making. Leadership provides the direction and accountability needed to make new ways of working stick.
"The organizations that scale successfully treat IoT as a change management initiative, not simply a technology project," Gluck said. "When each group understands its role, adoption becomes part of everyday operations."
The distinction matters. Organizations that struggle often assume deployment ends when the hardware is installed and the platform goes live. In reality, that's when the work of adoption begins.
Building Operational Muscle Before You Scale
For organizations preparing to scale, Gluck's advice is pointed: don't use a pilot solely to prove the technology works. In most cases, that's the easiest part.
A successful pilot should also answer operational questions. Who owns each alert? What actions should different events trigger? Do those new processes actually improve outcomes? It's far easier to refine those workflows at one location than after expanding to hundreds of sites.
It's also important to establish ownership for change management early. A technology partner can help deploy the solution, but adoption has to come from within the organization. The companies that scale most successfully recognize that rolling out devices is only the beginning. Long-term success comes from changing how the business operates.
The Convergence
The Transforma forecast and Gluck's field observations point to the same conclusion. The connectivity layer is standardizing — SGP.32 is becoming a baseline capability rather than a differentiating feature, much as 4G LTE became table stakes for mobile broadband. As adoption grows, competitive differentiation will shift toward broader managed connectivity capabilities: operational support, regulatory compliance, integration, and customer service.
That shift mirrors what Gluck sees on the ground. The technology provides the visibility, but it's the processes around it that turn insights into better decisions. Data only creates value when it's tied to clear ownership, defined workflows, and people who are expected to act on it.
For the cellular IoT ecosystem, the message is clear. The radio, the SIM, and the provisioning standard are converging on a stable foundation. The next decade of value creation will be won by the operators and integrators who master the operational discipline to make that foundation productive at scale.
For more on IoT connectivity trends, see our IoT coverage. For the intersection of cellular tech and IoT, see Semiconductors.
According to Transforma Insights' full report, SGP.32 will account for 53% of cellular IoT shipments by 2035. The Digital Matter Q&A on IoT Business News explores the operational challenges in depth.