Retail IoT Applications Analysis Report 2024: Connections in Retail Set to Surpass 217 Million by 2028
The untapped market potential is nevertheless still vast and growth is showing no signs of slowing down. The report forecasts that global shipments of display screens for digital signage will grow from 21.2 million units in 2023 at a CAGR of 11.6 percent to reach 36.6 million units by 2028.
The retail industry is an important vertical for cellular IoT connectivity with 147.9 million cellular connections today and a total addressable market size of over 372 million POS terminals, ATMs, vending machines, parking meters, digital signs and fare collection devices worldwide. The report forecasts that the number of cellular IoT connections in the retail industry will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.0 percent to reach 217.7 million connections worldwide in 2028.
Shipments of cellular IoT devices will at the same time increase at a CAGR of 6.2 percent from 57.9 million units in 2023 to 78.2 million units in 2028. Cellular IoT technology enables devices such as POS terminals and ATMs to be used at new locations where fixed line connectivity is unavailable or impractical. The technology has a more transformational effect on markets such as vending and parking, where machine operators need to reorganise their operations in order to benefit from the availability of real-time information.
The installed base of connected vending machines in North America reached 2.3 million units at the end of 2023, whereas the corresponding figure for EU27+3 was 1.8 million units. The North American market has reached a state of maturity with a penetration rate of over 71.2 percent. Europe is meanwhile still in an early stage with a penetration rate of around 42.5 percent.
However, vending is also one of the fastest-growing segments for connectivity solutions in the retail industry, driven by demand for cashless payment and vending telemetry solutions. The North American market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.4 percent between 2023 and 2028, reaching 2.8 million connected vending machines at the end of the period. Similarly, the European market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 10.9 percent to reach 3.0 million connections by 2028.
The parking industry has been one of the earliest adopters of IoT communications technology. Today, approximately 67 percent of the world's 652,000 multi-space meters are connected primarily to cellular networks. This penetration rate will continue to increase steadily throughout the foreseeable future, as nearly all new multi-space meter deployments have connectivity as a requirement.
In contrast, connectivity has only recently become an optional feature in single space meters and today only 16 percent of the single-space meters in the world are connected. However, connected single-space meters have recently had a breakthrough in the North American market, where mixed deployments that comprise both single-space and multi-space meters are becoming increasingly common.
The share of single-space meters that incorporate connectivity is now growing rapidly and expected to reach 32 percent by 2028. Cellular connectivity has become a very popular option for POS terminals and was incorporated in 52 percent of the devices shipped in 2023. Wireless technology has an important role in facilitating the global adoption of electronic payments, as it enables the rollout of POS terminals to many new market segments as well as regions where the fixed line telecommunications infrastructure is less developed.
Cellular connectivity is very useful for applications such as temporary signs and in locations where access to fixed line communications is not available or costly to obtain. However, cellular is expected to remain a niche connectivity technology due to the higher costs associated with the technology, especially in bandwidth intensive applications.
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