We need not tell you that smartphones are a big market, but did you know that the world of IoT may soon overtake them? It’s predicted that in 2024, Bluetooth-enabled IoT devices will surpass smartphones, making IoT the king of Bluetooth.
What Do the Statistics Look Like?
This is a huge claim; smartphones are one of the most popular devices in the world. What are the numbers that back up this claim?
ABI Research performed the investigation into this case. They found that IoT made up 13 percent of the total Bluetooth devices produced in 2018. They also noticed that IoT took up 10 percent of the Wi-Fi space in the same year.
With the current trend in IoT devices, ABI predicted that they will have a 31 percent share of the total number of Bluetooth devices shipped and a 27 percent share of Wi-Fi devices. Yes, that’s right – one third of the Bluetooth devices shipped in 2024 may be IoT devices!
This increase will usurp the smartphones from their podium. The report predicts that in 2024, the smartphone’s grip on the market will fall to under 30 percent of the total share.
Where Will We Find These IoT Devices?
The report goes into a little bit of detail on which areas of IoT will flourish. This makes for an interesting look into how our future may be defined by IoT devices in five years.
One of these key areas is tracking. This is useful for devices such as health trackers and smart clothing. At the moment, these hold a 2 percent market share, but it’s predicted that this will grow to 8.5 percent in two years – over four times as many devices as there are now!
One of the fastest growing markets for both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, however, will be the smart home hubs. These include examples like Google Home and Amazon Echo. Wi-Fi hubs will grow from 5 percent to 16 percent in 2024, and Bluetooth hubs will increase from 4 percent to 13 percent.
Does This Mean Smartphones Will Decline in Popularity?
Not so! In fact, smartphones may very well maintain their popularity in 2024. The reason this share of the Bluetooth market will fall below 30 percent is because of IoT’s increase in production rather than a decrease in the number of smartphones being made.
What this means, however, is that companies that previously held a monopoly on smartphone Bluetooth will soon have to expand their horizons to IoT. If they don’t, they risk being overshadowed once IoT overtakes smartphones as the most produced Bluetooth device.
“While the connectivity chipset market is currently dominated by Qualcomm, Broadcom, and MediaTek thanks to their entrenchment in the smartphone market, IoT opens the competition to a wider range of chipset vendors who are exploring different dimensions of differentiation,” said Andrew Zignani, the Principal Analyst of ABI Research.
“These include companies like Cypress (recently acquired by Infineon), Silicon Labs, Nordic Semiconductor, Dialog Semiconductor, NXP, STMicroelectronics, TI, On Semiconductor, u-blox, and Atmosic, among others.”
The Future of Bluetooth
While smartphones currently take a large share of the Bluetooth market, its dominance isn’t guaranteed. If the predictions are correct, we’ll see IoT devices overtake smartphones in the technology market.
Do you think Bluetooth IoT devices will overtake smartphones? Let us know below.
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