Enterprises are increasing Internet of Things (IoT) deployments as they meet or exceed return on investment (ROI), according to Omdia's latest IoT Enterprise Survey. A recent poll by the market research firm found that 90% of businesses say their IoT projects have met or exceeded expectations, with 5G highlighted as an important accelerator for more enterprise IoT deployments. The company's sample includes 500 global enterprises operating in 9 countries, all of which are at some stage of IoT solution rollout or deployment.

"CSPs are likely to see an increase in high-bandwidth, high-value connections, as 66% of enterprises are using or plan to use 5G connections, and 53% are using or planning to deploy new connections using LTE," Omdia said. The growth in low-bandwidth connections like NB-IoT and LoRaWAN is equally encouraging.”

Omdia's report shows that the percentage of enterprises spending more than $1 million on IoT deployments rose from 32% to 48% year over year. Businesses spending more than $5 million on IoT deployments grew 5% year over year.

Of course, IoT deployments only work if they work. The vast majority of businesses surveyed for the study said: 62% said their IoT projects met expectations and 29% said projects exceeded expectations.

According to Omdia, 84 percent of businesses surveyed are using IoT to meet their SDGs, with about half saying IoT deployment is critical to this success.

The 5G IoT market is expected to double by 2026

Omdia's lead IoT analyst John Canali shrugs off headlines suggesting that IoT and 5G are overhyped and underdelivered. He noted that while 5G is still an evolving technology, 5G IoT is beyond the hype.

"Our findings are clear: Businesses are embracing IoT and 5G is becoming the preferred type of network connection," he said.

John Canali identified three problem areas for enterprise IoT deployments: security, privacy, and complexity.

"These issues all present opportunities for system integrators, cloud providers, hardware suppliers, component suppliers and various other IoT suppliers," he added.

Omdia's findings support a Juniper research report published earlier this year, which projected growth in the cellular IoT market to nearly double over the next few years, from $31 billion this year to $61 billion by 2026. Dollar. Growth in the segment will be driven by high-end 5G, especially low-end NB-IoT and LTE-M, the company said. These opposing families of cellular technologies will be the "key" to capturing new IoT business in the gap between high-power and high-performance WAN and low-power WAN use cases.

Juniper Research says NB-IoT and LTE-M, as twin cellular IoT for LPWAN use cases, will be the fastest growing cellular IoT technologies over the next four years. The company predicts that LPWAN connections will grow significantly by 1,200% by 2026. "Low cost of connectivity and hardware will drive the adoption of remote monitoring in key verticals such as agriculture, smart cities and manufacturing," it said.