Satellite IoT has long been a niche within a niche. While billions of devices connect over cellular, Wi-Fi and low-power networks, only a few million have used satellites: trackers on ships and containers, sensors on remote pipelines, beacons on fishing boats and wildlife. The service was expensive, the terminals were specialised and the market was served by a handful of operators.
A new forecast suggests that is about to change. By Omdia’s count, 7.7 million devices were talking to satellites in 2023. The research firm’s new outlook has that figure at 197.6 million by 2035, roughly 25 times larger in a little over a decade.
The number is striking, and it lines up with a year of heavy investment in satellite networks that can talk directly to standard devices. It also deserves careful reading. Satellite IoT forecasts have been optimistic before, and the growth depends heavily on one sector: cars.
What Omdia Forecasts
The forecast was published in August 2026 and reported widely, including by Light Reading’s coverage of the Omdia forecast.
The Headline Number
Omdia puts satellite IoT connections at 7.7 million in 2023 and projects 197.6 million by 2035. That implies compound annual growth of about 31% over the period. Some reports rounded the final figure to 197.7 million; the difference is not material.
To put the scale in context, Omdia expects 5.9 billion cellular IoT connections and 48 billion IoT connections of all kinds by 2035. Even at nearly 200 million, satellite would remain a small share of the total. Its value lies in coverage, not volume.
Low Orbit Versus Geostationary
The forecast draws a sharp line between two kinds of satellite networks. On Omdia’s numbers, low Earth orbit connections rise by 88.6% a year on average. Geostationary connections grow too, but at just 7.3% a year.
Geostationary satellites sit about 36,000 kilometres above the equator and appear fixed in the sky. They have served maritime, aviation and industrial customers for decades, but their distance means higher delay and larger power demands for small devices. Low orbit satellites fly a few hundred to about 1,500 kilometres up, which makes it easier for small, low-power devices to reach them. Most of the new investment in satellite IoT is going into low orbit.
Cars Lead The Growth
Automotive is the largest driver. Omdia expects automotive to account for more than half of satellite IoT connections by 2035. According to TelecomsTechNews’ report on the forecast, Omdia counted 11,000 vehicles using satellite links in 2023 and projects 112 million by 2035, a growth rate of about 115% a year. Stellantis, BMW, Tesla and Geely are among the carmakers already trialling or rolling out satellite links.
Most of what remains comes from moving freight: trucks, trailers, containers and ships. Utilities, farms, environmental sensors, defence users and remote monitoring account for the smaller slices.
John Canali, principal analyst for IoT at Omdia, tied the growth to what customers now expect: “While the technical advances in the satellite market are significant, their timing is equally important. As IoT matures enterprises increasingly need global coverage without connectivity gaps, as well as greater resilience when terrestrial connectivity is unavailable.”
Where The Market Stands Today
A forecast is only as useful as its starting point, and the current market is still small.
A Few Million Subscribers
Berg Insight, a Swedish IoT analyst firm, counted 5.8 million satellite IoT subscribers worldwide at the end of 2024 and forecast 32.5 million by 2029, according to its latest satellite IoT market report summary. It estimated satellite IoT revenues at €334.1 million in 2024, rising to €1.58 billion in 2029.
Berg’s and Omdia’s figures are not directly comparable, since the firms define and count connections differently. But both describe a market measured in single-digit millions today.
Who Leads
Berg Insight lists Iridium as the largest satellite IoT operator, with about 2.0 million subscribers, followed by ORBCOMM with about 742,000 and Globalstar with about 0.51 million. Viasat does not publish IoT subscriber numbers. Newer players such as Myriota, Kinéis and Thuraya serve customers in the tens of thousands.
Berg tracks 46 satellite IoT operators, of which only 17 were offering commercial services when its report was published. Many of the newer entrants are still building constellations or testing services.
The Coverage Gap
The case for satellite IoT rests on a simple fact. Berg Insight notes that only about 10% of the Earth’s surface has access to terrestrial connectivity. Oceans, deserts, mountains, forests, polar regions and large stretches of farmland and highway sit outside the reach of mobile masts. Any device that moves through or sits in those areas needs another way to connect.
Why Growth Could Accelerate Now
Satellite IoT forecasts have been bullish for years. Several changes make this period different.
Standard Chips Can Reach Satellites
The biggest change is standards. The 3GPP, the body that sets mobile network standards, added support for non-terrestrial networks in Release 17 and has extended it in later releases. That allows NB-IoT and LTE-M devices, the same low-power cellular technologies used in meters and trackers, to connect to satellites. We explained those technologies in our guide to the networks built to whisper.
In practice, this means a device maker can use a standard cellular module, rather than a proprietary satellite modem, to reach both terrestrial and satellite networks. Modules supporting these features are already available, and operators such as Iridium are launching standards-based services. Iridium’s NTN Direct service is due to become commercially available to Deutsche Telekom IoT customers in the fourth quarter of 2026.
More Satellites, Lower Costs
The second change is supply. Low orbit constellations are being built and launched at a pace that was unthinkable a decade ago. More satellites mean more frequent coverage, more capacity and, over time, lower prices per message. Omdia cites falling connectivity costs among its reasons for the growth.
Satellite Sold Through Mobile Operators
The third change is distribution. Mobile operators are increasingly selling satellite coverage as part of their own IoT offerings. Deutsche Telekom has a roaming agreement with Iridium for NB-IoT. AT&T will sell Amazon Leo satellite broadband to business customers. When satellite becomes an option on an existing IoT contract, it reaches customers who would never have bought a separate satellite service.
Heavy Investment In Direct-To-Device
The fourth change is money. In 2026 alone, Amazon agreed to buy Globalstar, Rocket Lab agreed to buy Iridium, Lynk and Omnispace merged to form Elveo Mobile, and Viasat and Space42 committed up to $1 billion to a shared direct-to-device platform called Equatys. Most of these deals are aimed at smartphones, but the same networks and spectrum can carry IoT traffic.
Why Cars Dominate The Forecast
The automotive projection deserves a closer look, since it accounts for most of the growth.
Modern cars already carry embedded cellular modems for emergency calls, navigation, diagnostics and software updates. We traced how connectivity became central to vehicles in our story on how IoT rewired the car. If those modems gain satellite capability through standard chipsets, every new car fitted with them becomes a potential satellite IoT connection.
That explains the scale. Car production runs at tens of millions of units a year. Once satellite support becomes a standard feature of in-car modems, numbers could climb quickly without drivers doing anything.
The main use cases are emergency messaging when a vehicle is outside mobile coverage, location reporting for stolen vehicles and basic telematics in remote areas. In September, Iridium, Deutsche Telekom IoT and Toyota demonstrated a short voice message sent from a car over Iridium’s satellites using a standard NB-IoT module, a sign of how carmakers are testing the idea.
There is an important distinction, though. A car that can connect to a satellite is not the same as a car that regularly does. Many vehicles may only use the satellite link in rare situations, such as an emergency on a remote road. How forecasts count those connections, and how operators price them, will matter a great deal.
Beyond Cars
Other sectors will grow more slowly in volume but may matter more in value.
Logistics And Transport
Containers, trailers, rail wagons and ships move through areas without coverage every day. Satellite connectivity lets shippers track location, temperature and condition across the whole journey rather than only near ports and cities. We looked at how trackers work on assets with little or no power in our story on tracking assets that have no power.
Energy, Utilities And Agriculture
Pipelines, wellheads, remote substations, wind and solar farms, water systems and farms often sit far from mobile networks. Many of these applications send small amounts of data, such as a meter reading, a pressure value or an alarm, which suits satellite IoT well. IoT Business News noted that demand is expected to come from places such as long freight routes through empty country, offshore platforms, farmland and thinly populated regions.
Environment And Defence
Environmental monitoring, from river levels to wildlife tracking, has relied on satellite IoT for years. Defence and government users also need connectivity that works anywhere, including when terrestrial networks are damaged or unavailable.
Reading The Forecast With Care
Forecasts are useful for understanding direction, but satellite IoT has a history of numbers running ahead of reality.
Earlier Forecasts Overshot
In 2022, Berg Insight forecast that the global satellite IoT subscriber base would reach 21.2 million by 2026. Its 2025 report counted 5.8 million subscribers at the end of 2024 and moved the 32.5 million milestone out to 2029. That gap does not make current forecasts wrong, but it is a reminder that satellite IoT has repeatedly grown more slowly than analysts expected.
Definitions Differ
Firms count different things. Some count active subscribers, others count connections or devices capable of connecting. A car with a satellite-capable modem that never uses it may appear in one forecast and not another. Readers comparing numbers across reports should check what each one measures.
Dependence On A Few Assumptions
The Omdia forecast depends heavily on automotive adoption. If carmakers move more slowly, or if satellite features remain limited to premium models, the total could fall well short. Likewise, delays in constellation launches or regulatory approvals would slow growth across all sectors.
The Practical Limits
Even with standard chips and more satellites, satellite IoT has limits that affect how it is used.
Data rates are low. Satellite NB-IoT suits small, infrequent messages, not video or large data transfers. Latency is higher than on terrestrial networks, and some services use store-and-forward, where messages are held until a satellite passes overhead.
Power consumption rises when a device must reach a satellite, which shortens battery life for sensors that rely on small batteries.
Antenna placement matters. A device buried under metal, indoors or in a shipping container may struggle to see the sky.
Cost remains higher than terrestrial connectivity for most use cases. Satellite is typically used to fill gaps rather than as the primary link.
Omdia’s forecast frames satellite IoT as a complement to terrestrial networks, not a replacement. That is the right way to think about it.
What It Means For IoT Buyers
For companies planning connected products and deployments, the forecast suggests a few practical steps.
Consider satellite capability at the design stage. Modules that support both terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks give products the option to use satellite later, even if it is not needed at launch.
Ask connectivity providers which satellite partners they work with and whether satellite coverage can be added to existing contracts.
Match the service to the job. Narrowband satellite IoT suits trackers and sensors sending small messages. Sites needing higher data rates may need broadband satellite terminals instead.
Plan for coverage transitions. Devices that move between terrestrial and satellite networks should be tested in the real places they will operate, including how they switch and how much power they use.
Treat forecasts as direction, not certainty. Plan around services that are commercially available, with prices and contracts in hand.
A Small Market With Large Ambitions
Satellite IoT remains small today, measured in single-digit millions of connections against billions on terrestrial networks. Omdia’s forecast of nearly 200 million by 2035 reflects real changes: standard chips that can reach satellites, low orbit constellations growing quickly, operators selling satellite coverage and billions of dollars flowing into direct-to-device networks.
Whether the market reaches that number will depend largely on cars, and on whether satellite features become a standard part of vehicle connectivity. For everyone else, the more immediate change is simpler. Satellite coverage is becoming an option that can be added to ordinary IoT devices, rather than a separate and specialised technology.
