Smart Connected Assets And Operations Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends And Forecast (2025 - 2030)

Global Smart Connected Assets And Operations Market Trends and Insights

Rapid adoption of Industrial IoT platforms integrating asset performance management

Industrial IoT platforms unify disparate machines, sensors and enterprise systems, enabling near real-time asset visibility and cross-site benchmarking. BMW’s Spartanburg facility runs a private 5G loop that connects 2,800 production robots and has lowered unplanned downtime by 60%. ^{[1]Staff reporter, “BMW Spartanburg Plant 5G Private Network Manufacturing,” Plant Engineering, plantengineering.com}Nordic Sugar realized 15% energy savings and a 20% cut in maintenance costs within one year of deploying ABB’s Genix APM suite. These outcomes show how unified data lakes accelerate root-cause analysis across supply chains. Platform architectures also simplify compliance by embedding audit trails and cybersecurity controls. As licensing shifts toward consumption-based models, IIoT platforms have become accessible to midsize manufacturers, expanding the smart connected assets and operations market even in cost-sensitive regions.

Increasing shift towards predictive maintenance to minimize downtime

Predictive maintenance now blends vibration, thermal, acoustic and process data with AI to anticipate cascading failures. Duke Energy’s fleetwide rollout lowered unplanned outages by 25% and avoided USD 50 million in annual costs. McWane Ductile prevented a pump meltdown that would have stopped production for 48 hours, saving USD 84,000 in a single incident. ISO 13374 is catalyzing interoperability, allowing smaller plants to plug AI tools into existing condition-monitoring hardware. Vendors guarantee ROI within twelve months, reducing adoption barriers for CFOs. As AI models learn equipment behavior, asset lifecycles stretch and spare-parts inventories shrink, reinforcing uptake across the smart connected assets and operations market.

Demand for remote operations and worker safety in hazardous environments

Oil platforms, mines and chemical plants increasingly rely on connected sensors, drones and wearable devices to limit human exposure to danger zones. Edge-enabled cameras and gas detectors feed continuous telemetry into centralized control rooms, allowing operators to intervene before accidents. Early adopters in mining report fewer lost-time incidents and lower insurance costs, strengthening the business case for digital retrofits. Wearable tags coupled with ultra-wide-band beacons enforce geofencing and lone-worker rules. Regulatory agencies now favor digital permitting processes that require demonstrable safety analytics, making remote operations an implicit license-to-operate criterion. These factors together raise demand for rugged 5G devices and secure IoT gateways that anchor the smart connected assets and operations market.

Proliferation of 5G private networks enabling real-time analytics at edge

Millisecond latency and network slicing make 5G private networks the backbone of autonomous operations. John Deere’s precision agriculture platform increased yields by 12% and cut fertilizer by 18% through real-time soil analysis and autonomous machinery orchestration. ^{[2]Corporate newsroom, “Precision Agriculture Technology,” John Deere, deere.com} Associated British Ports reduced container handling times by 30% after installing 5G across its terminals. With data processed locally, enterprises sidestep cloud latency and mitigate sovereignty concerns. Device-level AI chips offload image recognition and quality checks to the edge, freeing central resources for long-term model training. Telecom vendors now offer outcome-based pricing—charging by averted downtime—which further propels 5G rollouts inside the smart connected assets and operations market.

High upfront capital and integration complexity for brownfield assets

Retrofitting decades-old equipment demands custom gateways, protocol converters and staged cut-overs that can triple base project costs. Ford’s USD 4.7 billion supply-chain analytics rebuild after the 2021 chip crunch illustrates the financial weight of brownfield digitalization. ^{[3]Research division, “Ford’s $4.7 Billion Fix – The Power of Supply Chain Analytics,” DataZip, datazip.io} DuPont needed 18 months merely to map legacy systems before its Supply Chain Cockpit went live. Many plants therefore phase projects over multiple fiscal cycles, extending payback horizons and slowing overall smart connected assets and operations market expansion. Vendors are responding with modular, subscription-priced kits, yet ROI still hinges on asset criticality and available downtime windows.

Cyber-security vulnerabilities across expanded attack surfaces

Converged OT-IT networks expose production lines to ransomware and nation-state threats. Industrial-focused ransomware attacks rose 200% in 2024, according to Kaspersky. Nucor’s 2025 breach halted steel output across several U.S. mills, underlining how quickly cyber incidents translate into physical losses. Waterfall Security finds 78% of plants still lack dedicated OT monitoring, leaving lateral-movement paths unchecked. Compliance frameworks such as NIST and Europe’s NIS2 directive now demand segmented architectures and continuous threat modeling, adding cost and slowing decision cycles. Until low-touch security blueprints mature, cybersecurity will temper growth in the smart connected assets and operations market.

Segment Analysis

By Component: Software platforms drive integration value

Software captured 45.78% of the 2024 smart connected assets and operations market share, underscoring its role as the glue that connects heterogeneous assets into a coherent decision-support fabric. Asset Performance Management suites like Shell’s deployment cut unplanned downtime by 35% across global refineries. Manufacturing Execution Systems and SCADA platforms are embedding AI agents that learn from terabytes of machine logs, reducing cycle-time variability. Analytics workbenches running on Microsoft Azure handle large sensor payloads in minutes, enabling rapid root-cause correlation. Services, forecast to grow at a 9.43% CAGR, include system integration, change management and managed analytics, providing much-needed expertise for OT-IT convergence projects. Hardware sensors, gateways and edge servers remains essential but experiences slower growth as commoditization sets in. Vendors such as Shoreline IoT address the need for flexible instrumentation through programmable sensors that adjust sampling rates without firmware flashes. Overall, the component mix continues to tilt toward recurring software and service subscriptions, reshaping vendor revenue models and reinforcing platform stickiness across the smart connected assets and operations market.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By Connectivity Technology: Wireless solutions accelerate despite wired dominance

Ethernet and fieldbus still underpin critical control loops, accounting for 51.42% share in 2024, yet wireless links log the fastest gains with a 10.19% CAGR. BMW’s 5G-enabled body shop confirms that sub-millisecond latency is now viable for precision robotics. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth LE overlay non-mission-critical tasks like tool tracking and worker wearables. LPWAN options such as LoRa and NB-IoT extend visibility to remote pumps and pipelines at minimal power budgets. Thales and Cubic’s eSIM partnership highlights evolving multi-network roaming needed for mobile industrial assets. Satellite links secure telemetry from offshore rigs, providing backup paths in disaster scenarios. Hybrid mesh topologies are emerging, where wired backbones anchor deterministic traffic and wireless tiers offer flexible endpoint deployment. These developments collectively enlarge the addressable base for the smart connected assets and operations market.

By Deployment Mode: Cloud adoption accelerates despite on-premise preference

On-premise systems retained 56.89% share in 2024 as firms guard intellectual property and meet data-sovereignty rules. Cloud subscriptions, however, will grow at an 11.32% CAGR through 2030, reflecting the lure of elastic compute for AI model training and multi-tenant updates. Hybrid blueprints route time-critical data to local edge nodes while forwarding aggregated datasets to hyperscale AI engines. Microsoft and Cognite co-developed industrial data operations on Fabric to streamline this bifurcated flow. Edge containers now package AI inferencing close to sensors, shrinking cloud egress fees and meeting latency budgets. Pay-as-you-go billing models lower entry costs for smaller factories, expanding the smart connected assets and operations market size among SMEs. Nevertheless, industries under strict export-control laws still favor air-gapped clusters, keeping on-premise architectures relevant.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By Industry Vertical: Manufacturing leadership faces smart-city challenge

Manufacturing held 32.38% of 2024 revenue, benefiting from economies of scale and clear ROI cases such as Toyota’s global takt-time optimization. Predictive quality and autonomous material handling have become baseline capabilities in Tier-1 plants. Smart cities and infrastructure, forecast to log an 8.42% CAGR, gain steam as municipalities embed IoT in utilities, traffic and public safety grids. Energy and utilities deploy connected sensors to balance grids and integrate renewables; Duke Energy cut outage frequency by 40% using AI analytics. Oil and Gas rigs rely on digital twins for corrosion monitoring, while miners adopt collision-avoidance systems to protect workers in dynamic pits. Logistics firms leverage telematics to optimize driver behavior and reduce idling. Healthcare facilities track critical equipment uptime and indoor air quality to ensure patient safety. Agriculture embraces precision seeding and irrigation, with John Deere showing tangible yield and sustainability gains. Cross-vertical learning such as port logistics borrowing lean-manufacturing principles keeps expanding solution repertoires within the smart connected assets and operations market.

Geography Analysis

North America commanded 36.73% of 2024 revenue as enterprises capitalized on mature industrial networks and clear regulatory signals favoring digital record-keeping. Federal incentives for domestic semiconductor and battery production further drive investment in connected assets. Vendor ecosystems cluster around tech hubs, easing access to system integrators and specialized talent.

Asia-Pacific is set to deliver the fastest 8.91% CAGR through 2030 as Beijing’s digital-factory mandate pushes thousands of plants to integrate IoT, AI and cloud within tight timelines. Japan’s Society 5.0 program emphasizes cyber-physical fusion to offset labor shortages, while South Korea’s Manufacturing Renaissance Vision funds 30,000 smart factories by 2023. India accelerates SME adoption through SAMARTH Udyog Bharat 4.0 centers that provide testbeds and standards guidance. Regional telecoms roll out stand-alone 5G to capitalize on private-network demand.

Europe maintains steady growth as the Green Deal and digital-product passport rules steer plants toward energy-efficient operations. German Mittelstand firms update legacy equipment to remain cost-competitive, while Nordic ports pilot autonomous cranes. The Middle East is emerging as an AI hotspot after Microsoft’s USD 1.5 billion stake in Abu Dhabi’s G42 aimed at scaling industrial LLMs. South American miners invest in remote-operated haulage to counter volatile commodity cycles. Collectively, these trajectories reinforce the global expansion of the smart connected assets and operations market.