The global IoT connectivity market has rebounded sharply following the inventory, supply chain, and demand challenges that weighed on the wireless industry from 2022 through 2024, with 2025 ending on a notably stronger footing for leading vendors, according to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research. The firm also warns that new headwinds are forming, particularly RAM shortages that could create significant planning and pricing challenges across mainstream consumer devices in the second half of 2026 and beyond.
“Wireless connectivity is no longer just about linking devices, it is increasingly about enabling scalable edge AI across consumer, enterprise, and industrial markets,” said Andrew Zignani, Senior Research Director at ABI Research. “The vendors that align low-latency connectivity, ultra-low power design, and on-device intelligence will be best positioned as the market shifts from standalone radios to integrated, application-specific platforms.”
Among the market’s largest growth signals, ABI Research forecasts Bluetooth device shipments to rise from 5.4 billion units in 2025 to 8.1 billion in 2030, driven in a large part by the accelerated rollout of high volume smart labels, while Wi-Fi device shipments are expected to increase from 3.8 billion units in 2026 to 4.3 billion by 2030. The firm also projects UWB device shipments to reach nearly 1.18 billion by 2030, up from 597 million in 2026, underscoring broad momentum across short-range wireless technologies such as smart home, consumer robotics, healthcare, wearables, and automotive use cases expand.
The report highlights Wi-Fi 7’s growing move into IoT applications, helped by the availability of 20 Megahertz solutions, while Wi-Fi 8 has already begun to emerge through new chipset and platform announcements from companies including MediaTek, Broadcom, ASUS, and TP-Link. At the same time, multi-protocol solutions combining Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 802.15.4 continue to gain traction as vendors target stricter power, latency, size, and cost requirements across end markets.
“Growth opportunities remain compelling, but the competitive landscape is becoming more complex as suppliers balance compute, memory, power consumption, robustness, and security across a much wider set of device categories,” Zignani said. “What happens next will depend not only on innovation cycles for Wi-Fi 7, Wi-Fi 8, Bluetooth, UWB, and 802.15.4, but also on how effectively the ecosystem responds to memory constraints, pricing pressure, and the need for clearer business cases around edge AI.” ABI Research
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