Key Takeaways

  • A newly released tracker analyzes IoT acquisitions and investments completed through June 30, 2026.
  • Deal data is organized by buyer, target, region, vertical market, and use case.
  • The data helps enterprises and investors distinguish activity in industrial, consumer, smart-city, and infrastructure IoT markets.

Omdia has released its "IoT Investment Tracker - 2H26," providing a structured view of acquisitions and investments across the Internet of Things market through June 30, 2026. The tracker categorizes activity by acquirer, acquiree, region, vertical, and use case, giving technology vendors, corporate strategists, and investors a way to examine where capital is moving within a highly fragmented sector.

IoT is less a single market than a collection of connected-device businesses with different economics, sales cycles, and technical requirements. An industrial monitoring deployment does not resemble a smart-home product, even if both rely on sensors, connectivity, and software. Connected cars, fleet management, smart cities, and infrastructure projects bring their own procurement patterns as well.

By separating deals across those categories, the tracker helps users move beyond broad claims about rising or falling IoT investment. A period of muted consumer-device funding, for example, could coincide with stronger activity around industrial automation or connected infrastructure. Aggregate deal numbers alone can obscure those differences.

The connected-device base is already substantial, with the GSMA reporting that global cellular IoT connections reached 3.1 billion in 2023 and projecting that the total will rise to 5.8 billion by 2029. That expansion creates opportunities in connectivity, device management, security, analytics, and lifecycle services, but it also raises the stakes for vendors trying to build defensible positions.

Worldwide spending offers another measure of the commercial backdrop. IDC forecast that global IoT spending would reach $1.4 trillion in 2024. The figure encompasses a broad enterprise market tied to devices, platforms, connectivity, implementation, and ongoing services. It also helps explain why acquisition strategies vary so widely. Some buyers seek hardware expertise, while others want industry-specific applications, recurring software revenue, data assets, or customer relationships.

Geography provides a useful lens for analyzing this activity, because regulatory conditions, network availability, and industrial concentration differ by market. Vertical specialization is another key metric. A business built around connected vehicles may have little overlap with one focused on municipal lighting, despite both appearing under the IoT label.

Technical architecture also shapes deal value. MQTT remains widely used for lightweight device messaging, while LTE-M and NB-IoT support cellular connections for many low-power, wide-area deployments. Buyers assessing an IoT target evaluate protocol support, device interoperability, connectivity costs, and the effort involved in managing equipment over a long operating life. Because hardware can stay in the field for years, compatibility and support obligations are critical evaluation factors.

Omdia's broader IoT Devices & Components Intelligence Service tracks historical and forecast installed bases and device shipments by region and connectivity technology, including cellular IoT module shipments through 2035. Combining that market view with transaction data offers a fuller picture of where devices are being deployed, where growth is expected, and where companies are spending to acquire capabilities.

The research is led by a principal analyst for IoT covering service-provider strategies, platforms, and connected cars. The analytical background supporting this tracking includes prior experience at Ovum, product management within AT&T's IoT organization, and connected-car market analysis at Strategy Analytics.

Large ecosystem participants such as Cisco, Siemens, and Qualcomm illustrate the range of businesses touched by IoT, from networking and industrial automation to edge-device silicon. The tracking data highlights which slices of the market are attracting buyers and investors, and whether deal activity follows device growth or concentrates around a narrower set of commercially mature applications.

For corporate development teams, the data can sharpen comparisons among potential targets. For vendors, it may reveal crowded categories or capability gaps, while for enterprise buyers, acquisition patterns signal where supplier consolidation is changing product road maps. Ultimately, this structured approach clarifies where capital is building durable IoT businesses rather than merely funding isolated connected products, giving market participants a clearer basis for strategic planning.