The latest IDC research report estimates that spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) will reach $202 billion in 2021 in Europe and will continue to experience double-digit growth through 2025.
The IoT market experienced growth at a slower rate than in previous years. IDC expects this growth to continue in 2021 in various sectors as operations, projects, and employees start to return to normal.
In 2021, the largest portion of spending is expected to remain within the hardware (modules and sensors) category, followed by the services category, as an important area of spending for enterprises, driven by the need to evaluate, design, and deploy the physical devices and to support ongoing operation of the devices.
The software category, especially application software for IoT used to organize and access a range of structured and unstructured information, will be the fastest-growing technology in the next few years.
The consumer sector will be the largest industry for European IoT spending in 2021. This will be driven by home automation solutions that enhance the living experience and streamline everyday interactions to create a connected home environment in which consumers can remotely monitor and control, through apps or websites, their home systems and home preferences/consumption.
The second largest industry, manufacturing, was one of the most impacted industries in 2020 but it has leveraged IoT solutions to remotely track, monitor, and maintain industrial manufacturing devices that are part of the production value chain by assessing equipment conditions and remotely diagnosing equipment failures before they happen by analyzing the live stream of data produced by the machine.
With social distancing and remote working, remote health monitoring solutions that use IoT technology to improve the quality of life and care through accurate and focused medical home monitoring will make healthcare the fastest-growing industry in the next couple of years.
