Cellular IoT Modules Hit 612 Million Shipments as Carriers and Factories Fuel Growth

Berg Insight reported on June 26, 2026, that annual shipments of cellular IoT modules reached 612 million units in 2025, a 33 percent jump from the prior year. The Swedish analyst firm said annual sales rose 19 percent to US$5.6 billion, a figure that excludes automotive network-access devices. The numbers confirm that the humble radio module, the component that lets a sensor or meter talk to a cell tower, has become a high-volume business in its own right.

The report lands as the broader connected-device market shows both strength and strain. IoT Analytics expects the count of cellular IoT connections to hit 5.4 billion in 2026 and to keep growing at a 14.3 percent compound annual rate through the early part of the decade. Connections rose 13 percent in 2025, a steady climb that reflects years of carrier investment in narrowband and LTE-M networks built for machines rather than phones.

Why modules matter

A cellular IoT module is the bridge between a physical device and the network. It carries the modem, the SIM or embedded subscriber identity, and often the processing needed to manage a connection. Quectel, the Chinese vendor, has led the market by volume, with rivals such as Telit, u-blox, and Sierra Wireless competing on reliability and support. When shipment counts rise by a third in a single year, it means utilities, logistics firms, and factories are attaching connectivity to more of their equipment.

Berg Insight's data points to industrial deployments as a main engine. Pallet trackers, pump monitors, and gateways that manage fleets of sensors all rely on modules that can survive years outdoors on a single battery. The pricing, however, has been volatile. The same report notes that average selling prices swung as suppliers fought for share, squeezing margins even as unit counts climbed.

Where the modules actually go

The 612 million figure hides a wide spread of uses. Smart electricity meters account for a large slice in many markets, since utilities swap mechanical counters for connected ones that report usage hourly. Logistics is another. Shipping containers and trailers now carry trackers that report position and temperature, cutting spoilage and theft. Agriculture uses soil and weather sensors to time irrigation, and cities drop air-quality modules on lampposts.

The common thread is that none of these devices need a phone plan. They need a cheap, long-lived link that works where Wi-Fi does not. That is the niche cellular IoT occupies, and the shipment surge suggests buyers have stopped treating connectivity as experimental.

Management software becomes its own market

Connecting a device is only the start. Once a company has millions of endpoints, it needs software to provision, monitor, and secure them. IoT For All reported on July 16, 2026, that the IoT device-management market is on track to reach US$10.42 billion by 2031, lifted by wider adoption, tougher security requirements, and the spread of 5G. The pitch is simple: a connected thermostat is useless if no one can tell whether it is online, patched, and untampered.

Security is the sore point. Academic publishers have flagged that the rush to attach critical infrastructure, power grids, water systems, and manufacturing lines to networks has raised fresh concerns about reliability and attack surface. A management layer that can push updates and revoke compromised devices is no longer optional for operators running essential services.

The rise of embedded SIMs

A quieter change is reshaping the hardware itself. Embedded SIMs, and the newer integrated SIM baked into the chip, let a module switch carriers without a physical card swap. For a sensor sealed in epoxy and buried in a field, that flexibility is the difference between a ten-year life and a truck roll to replace a dead subscription. Analysts expect iSIM to trim both cost and board space as volumes climb, which feeds directly back into the shipment numbers.

RedCap opens a middle tier

A new radio class is filling the gap between plodding narrowband modules and full 5G ones. 5G RedCap, also called NR-Light, targets devices that need a few hundred megabits rather than gigabits, at lower cost and power than a phone modem. Module makers are betting RedCap will pull mid-range gear, such as wearable scanners and video doorbells, onto cellular where Wi-Fi coverage falls short. Whether carriers price the tier attractively will decide how fast that happens.

A memory shortage threatens the high end

Not every signal is positive. Counterpoint Research warns that constraints in LPDDR4 memory and rising component costs are hitting high-end cellular IoT modules, the kind used in routers and rugged gateways. The firm cut its 2026 growth forecast for the global cellular IoT module market to about 4 percent year-on-year, down from an earlier 8 percent expectation.

The shortage matters because the most profitable modules are the intelligent ones, devices that run analytics at the edge instead of shipping raw data to the cloud. When memory gets tight and expensive, vendors either absorb the cost or pass it on, and both paths slow deployment of the pricier tier.

Policy and the road ahead

Governments are still writing the rules for this layer. The European Commission's next-generation Internet-of-Things policy references forecasts of more than 41 billion connected devices by 2025, drawn from International Data Corporation figures, and frames the rollout as a question of data growth as much as hardware. Regulators in several regions are studying how to set spectrum, security, and interoperability standards before the installed base locks in incompatible choices.

For now, the module market's 33 percent surge shows that the industry is past the pilot phase. The challenge ahead is less about attaching things to networks and more about keeping them managed, secure, and affordable as volumes scale into the billions.

We track these trends alongside our AI coverage of factory automation and our Battery Tech reporting on the cells that keep field devices running. Sources: Berg Insight on 612 million module shipments and IoT Analytics on the cellular IoT connection forecast.