How many IoT devices are there in 2026?
Connected IoT devices, cellular and LoRaWAN connections and market size from the firms that measure them, with dates, definitions and why they differ.
Photo: Gorilla ROI Data Connector / Unsplash
After reading this article you will be able to:
- Quote current figures for connected IoT devices, cellular IoT and LoRaWAN with the publisher and date of each
- Explain why counts of devices, connections, subscriptions and shipments give different totals
- Judge whether two IoT market sizes measure the same thing before comparing them
On this page
There were about 21 billion connected IoT devices in the world at the end of 2025, according to two independent counts: IoT Analytics puts the figure at 21.1 billion and Transforma Insights at 21 billion. Ericsson, which counts connections rather than devices, reports 22.3 billion IoT connections for the same date. Cellular IoT is where the counts split: between 2.4 and 4.7 billion depending on who measures and what they count. Market size estimates differ even more, from about $324 billion to more than $950 billion, because each firm draws the boundary of “the IoT market” in a different place.
This page collects the figures that publishers make visible on their own pages, gives the date and definition of each, and explains why they disagree. We only list numbers we could open at the source; figures that sit behind a paywall are left out. Each figure links to the publisher, so you can check it and cite it directly.
This page is updated every quarter; last checked October 22, 2026.
What are the main IoT statistics for 2026?
Values are as printed by each publisher. “Year” is the date the figure refers to, not the date it was published.
| Figure | Value | Year | Who measured it | What it counts | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connected IoT devices | 21.1 billion | End 2025 (estimate) | IoT Analytics, Oct 2025 | Active devices and gateways; no phones, PCs, tablets, RFID or NFC | State of IoT 2025 |
| Connected IoT devices, forecast | 39 billion | 2030 | IoT Analytics, Oct 2025 | Same definition | State of IoT 2025 |
| Active IoT devices | 21 billion | End 2025 | Transforma Insights, Apr 2026 | Installed devices, all connection types | Transforma news |
| Active IoT devices, forecast | 48 billion | 2035 | Transforma Insights, Apr 2026 | Same definition | Transforma news |
| IoT connections | 22.3 billion | End 2025 | Ericsson Mobility Report, Jun 2026 | 17.5 billion short-range plus 4.9 billion wide-area | Ericsson |
| IoT connections, forecast | 47.1 billion | 2031 | Ericsson Mobility Report, Jun 2026 | Same split | Ericsson |
| IoT connections, forecast | 40.8 billion | 2030 | GSMA Intelligence, Mar 2026 | Scope not stated in the public summary | GSMA Intelligence |
| Cellular IoT connections | 4.7 billion | 2025 | IoT Analytics, Apr 2026 | Cellular connections | Cellular IoT update |
| Cellular IoT connections | 4.5 billion | End 2025 | Ericsson Mobility Report, Jun 2026 | Cellular connections, part of wide-area | Ericsson |
| Cellular IoT devices | 2.4 billion | 2025 | Transforma Insights, Apr 2026 | Active devices on cellular | Transforma news |
| Mobile IoT users, China only | 2.888 billion | End 2025 | MIIT (China), Jan 2026 | Subscriptions at China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom | MIIT bulletin |
| LoRaWAN devices | 150 million | Sep 2026 | LoRa Alliance, Sep 2026 | “Connected devices”, method not stated | LoRa Alliance |
| Bluetooth device shipments | 5.4 billion units | 2025 | ABI Research for the Bluetooth SIG, May 2026 | Units shipped in the year | Bluetooth SIG |
| Enterprise IoT market | $324 billion | 2025 | IoT Analytics, Feb 2026 | Enterprise IoT; detailed scope in the paid report | IoT Analytics |
| IoT revenue | $368 billion | 2025 | Transforma Insights, Apr 2026 | Modules, connectivity and the application “service wrap” | Transforma news |
| IoT spending, forecast | More than $952 billion | 2029 | IDC, Jun 2025 | Enterprise buyer spending on hardware, software and services | IDC taxonomy |
How many connected IoT devices are there?
The installed base is the most consistent number in IoT. IoT Analytics and Transforma Insights land within a few percent of each other for the end of 2025, and Ericsson’s 22.3 billion connections sits close by. That agreement is partly real and partly because the three firms define their unit carefully. IoT Analytics counts active devices or gateways, not every sensor behind a gateway, counts a device with several radios once, and leaves out computers, laptops, phones, consumer tablets and one-way technologies such as RFID and NFC. That is why the figure is smaller than the “tens of billions of devices” sometimes quoted elsewhere.
Short-range radios dominate. Ericsson attributes 17.5 of its 22.3 billion connections to short-range IoT, and Transforma says short-range technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee account for 79 to 80% of connections. The same source puts consumer devices at almost 60% of the installed base in 2025. Most of the connected devices in the world are therefore TVs, speakers, plugs, cameras and wearables, not industrial sensors.
The forecasts agree less. IoT Analytics expects 39 billion devices in 2030, GSMA Intelligence 40.8 billion connections in 2030, Ericsson 47.1 billion connections in 2031 and Transforma 48 billion devices in 2035. Each is a model with its own assumptions about adoption, and forecasts get revised: IoT Analytics notes that its 2025 estimate came in about 300 million below what it had forecast a year earlier.
How many cellular IoT and LPWAN connections are there?
Here the sources diverge by a factor of two. IoT Analytics reports 4.7 billion cellular IoT connections in 2025 and Ericsson about 4.5 billion, of which around 2.6 billion use 4G or 5G as “Broadband and Critical IoT”. Transforma counts 2.4 billion cellular devices for the same year.
China is one likely reason for the gap. Its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology reports that the three state operators had 2.888 billion mobile IoT terminal users at the end of 2025, more than the country’s mobile phone users. That is a subscription count reported by operators. A subscription can outlive the device it was sold for, a meter can be counted before it is installed, and a device that swaps SIMs can appear twice. A model of active devices and a sum of operator-reported connections can therefore land far apart. For cellular IoT, always check which of the two you are looking at.
For LPWAN outside cellular, Transforma counts 0.5 billion devices in 2025 across all non-cellular LPWA technologies, with LoRaWAN as the most prominent example. For LoRaWAN alone, the LoRa Alliance reports 150 million LoRaWAN-connected devices announced in September 2026. The headline calls them “deployed”, the text “connected”, and the release does not say how they are counted, so treat it as the industry body’s own estimate. In Ericsson’s table, wide-area IoT minus cellular (4.9 minus 4.5 billion) leaves roughly 0.4 billion connections for all non-cellular wide-area technologies together.
How big is the IoT market?
There is no single IoT market size, only definitions. IoT Analytics measures the enterprise IoT market at $324 billion in 2025, up 13%. Transforma sizes IoT revenue at $368 billion for the same year, counting hardware modules, connectivity and the application that the connection supports. IDC’s spending guide covers enterprise buyer spending on end-user hardware, software, provisioned services and professional services and gives a 2029 total of more than $952 billion.
The spread comes from scope. Does the market include the whole connected machine or only the radio module? Integration and consulting services? Consumer devices? Spending by IoT vendors, or by everyone who buys anything for an IoT project? Before you put two market sizes side by side, read what each one includes. Very large round numbers quoted without a publisher or a scope are not worth citing.
Why do IoT numbers disagree?
Most disagreements come from five choices, and a published figure is only useful once you know which way each was made.
- Devices or connections. One device can hold several connections (a car with an embedded modem and Wi-Fi), and one gateway can stand in for hundreds of sensors. Ericsson counts connections, IoT Analytics and Transforma count devices.
- Active, installed or shipped. Installed base counts what is in use at a date. Shipments count what was sold in a year: the 5.4 billion Bluetooth units shipped in 2025 is an annual flow, not a population, and the article does not limit it to IoT products.
- Phones and PCs in or out. Some older and some marketing figures include smartphones, tablets and computers, which inflates the total. The research firms above exclude them, or count consumer electronics only in defined application groups.
- Subscriptions or devices. Operator and regulator data count SIMs and subscriptions. The ITU’s own indicator is M2M mobile-network subscriptions, which by design excludes everything that does not use a mobile network.
- Measured or forecast. A figure for “2025” published in October 2025 is itself an estimate for the end of the year. IoT Analytics gives 2025 growth as 14% in its October 2025 article and 13% in its February 2026 one, with the same 21.1 billion total. Use the latest edition and say which one you used.
A machine-to-machine SIM count, a shipment forecast and an installed base can all be honest, and still differ by billions.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher and the date shown in the table, and link to their page, which is what readers and reviewers will want to check. If you use the comparison or the explanations, cite this page as:
Internet of Things News, “IoT statistics 2026: how many connected devices, how big the market, and why the numbers disagree”, https://internetofthingsnews.com/learn/iot-statistics/, last checked October 22, 2026.
The page is drafted with AI tools and checked by one editor; the process and the corrections log are on the editorial policy page. If a publisher releases a new edition before our next quarterly check, tell us.
Where to go next
- What is the Internet of Things? defines what these numbers are counting.
- IoT connectivity overview explains the short-range and wide-area radios behind the totals.
- NB-IoT and LTE-M explained covers the cellular technologies in the 4.5 billion.
- LoRa vs LoRaWAN separates the radio from the network protocol in the LoRa Alliance figure.
Topics: statistics, market data, connected devices, cellular IoT, LPWAN