New research from Kaleido Intelligence, a roaming and connectivity market research firm, has found that cellular data generated by the transport and logistics sector will grow at a CAGR of 23% between 2024 and 2030. This will generate over $65 billion in revenue for Connectivity Service Providers in the sector in the latter year.
Kaleido’s latest vertical connectivity report draws on the insights from its 2024 Enterprise Connectivity Survey to show how the needs of the sector are shaping the connectivity of this vital industry.
Infotainment is a valuable niche
The report, Transport & Logistics Cellular IoT Opportunities 2025, shows how a large proportion of this revenue will come from the increasing use of infotainment services, as automakers continue to push software-defined vehicle features into their newest releases. However, these have received a lukewarm reception from drivers so far, with under 300 million consumer vehicles expected to use these services by 2030. Telematics will be far more prevalent, with more than double this number of vehicles using cellular telematics systems for navigation, safety communication and more.
Kaleido notes that most of these connections will be LTE and 5G-based, although there are many legacy eCall telematics systems in several markets that require circuit-switched connectivity. As these networks shut down in many places, the need to provide aftermarket solutions to meet regulatory requirements for eCall will grow, although the business models here are still uncertain.
The report also shows how the use of eSIM will continue to drive innovation in the space, particularly surrounding multiple enabled profile (MEP) systems, which are expected to become common to track telematics and infotainment accounts separately, rather than having multiple eSIMs active within a vehicle.
Cargo tracking market to expand
Businesses are increasingly looking to track their supply chain, and so the cargo tracking market is expanding rapidly. Kaleido anticipates these connections to exceed 62 million connections by 2030, growing at a steady 13% CAGR. While many of these connections will be reusable cellular smart labels and in-vehicle routers, we expect temporary cellular stickers to become more common, so increased adoption will not increase aggregate numbers highly. Kaleido expects the need to collate signals will continue, as the 3GPP approves passive Internet of Things (IoT) standards which will be used heavily in this sector, with signals collated by vehicles or warehouses and retransmitted, as well as the continued use of technologies like Bluetooth for this purpose. As a result, despite this increased demand Kaleido does not believe this will exceed the telematics market’s growth.
“Cellular connectivity will be only one modality for end-to-end cargo tracking”, remarked research author James Moar. “It will be most common in many places as an aggregator of other signals, and as a backbone for transport infrastructure, with private cellular networks proliferating in warehouses, ports and other industry hubs.”
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