Skills shortages and security are slowing the global narrowband IoT market. Nevertheless, it is expected to grow at an exponential CAGR of 61.5% from 2021 to 2029, according to a report from Research & Markets.

The IoT is creating hyper-connectivity by establishing digital connectivity between people and things at any time and anywhere. Around 50 billion networked devices exist globally as of 2020. The global narrowband IoT market is mainly driven by increasing internet penetration across the world, rising demand across industrial and commercial applications, and technological development.

Also, the reducing price of sensors, which act as a key to IoT applications, is a major growth opportunity for the narrowband IoT market. However, skills shortages and security concerns are the major challenges hampering growth.

Acceptance of the IoT is growing due to the increasing access of mobile devices and smart consumer electronics products worldwide. The increasing penetration along with the advancement in wireless communication technology is anticipated to drive the growth considerably in the coming years. There is also acceptance in the energy sector due to the rising investment in smart grid communications. IoT is the strength of smart grids since it contains data gathering and further analysis for energy optimisation.

The IoT is growing virtual worlds containing industrial systems, medical devices, automobiles and consumer electronics devices, such as the Amazon Echo smart speakers. Growing IoT acceptance is also due to low cost, indoor coverage, long battery life and enabling a large number of connected devices.

The global IoT market is segmented on the basis of various consumer and commercial applications, which include agriculture, automotive, transportation, building automation, energy, healthcare, infrastructure and manufacturing. Narrowband IoT in the energy sector is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 67.1% during the forecast period. The major drivers include increasing awareness levels and rising demand for energy and utility analytics.

Narrowband IoT is also expecting high demand from manufacturing sectors.

Market drivers include growing acceptance of IoT, increasing demand for long-range connectivity, requirement for low cost and low power connectivity, requirement for smart network bandwidth management, rising dispersion of smart connected devices, and increasing acceptance of telco cloud services.

Restraints include low data transmission speed and security and privacy concerns. There is also a long tail ecosystem containing module, application platform and devices, as well as interoperability and data management problems.

Companies mentioned in the report include IBM, AT&T, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Qualcomm, Samsung, Vodafone and Verizon.