Remote SIM provisioning capability to be present in 57% of cellular-based IoT shipments in 2035, with SGP.32 strongly dominating

Transforma Insights, the world’s leading IoT analyst firm, has today unveiled an update to its view on the prevalence of remote SIM provisioning capabilities in cellular IoT devices, including splits between SGP.02 ‘M2M’, SGP.22 ‘Consumer’ and SGP.32 ‘IoT’.

With the final commercial availability this year of the SGP.32 standard, Transforma Insights has published a report ‘Remote SIM provisioning forecast: SGP.32 will account for 53% of cellular shipments in 2035’ which provides our revised view of the likely adoption of SGP.32 and the other remote SIM provisioning standards over the next decade, based on a highly granular analysis of the likely adoption trends for each of hundreds of IoT use cases.

Key findings of the research were that:

• The total number of shipments that have the capability to use the various RSP technologies increases from 88 million in 2025 to 642 million in 2035.
• Overall, RSP standards go from representing 19% of shipments at the end of 2025, largely connected cars using SGP.02, to 57% of shipments in 2035. In 2035, SGP.02 accounts for 1% of all cellular IoT connections, SGP.22 3%, and SGP.32 53%.
• SGP.02 ‘M2M’ declines quite significantly over the forecast period as it is replaced by SGP.32, although there will be a persisting installed base of SGP.02 devices, particular vehicles.
• SGP.22 ‘Consumer’ continues to grow at a modest pace based on a set of user-oriented devices for which manual profile switching is a viable option.
• SGP.32 ‘IoT’ grows at a rapid pace, to 597 million in 2035, 53% of all shipments. It takes over from SGP.02 ‘M2M’ as the dominant RSP standard in 2027, and accounts from the majority of cellular shipments from 2034.
• The prevalence of the use of RSP in general and SGP.32 in particular is higher for higher tier 5G connections and lower for 5G mMTC.
• In parallel with that, RSP use is also significantly higher amongst connections that generate higher connectivity revenue, with RSP accounting for connections generating in excess of 70% of ‘Value Added Connectivity’ revenue.

Commenting on the findings, author Matt Hatton said: “There is no doubt that SGP.32 is an essential part of any IoT connectivity proposition. Enterprise customer demand levels are very high, even if there might be some vagueness about what specific capabilities they might want to use or role to perform. We have always maintained the view that SGP.32 is just a tool, albeit one that significantly helps streamline some aspects of the management of connectivity. But it is not a substitute for a well-rounded and effective connectivity proposition.”

About the report

The report ‘Remote SIM provisioning forecast: SGP.32 will account for 53% of cellular shipments in 2035’ (August 2026) provides Transforma Insights’ view of the overall adoption of SGP.32 alongside the other existing RSP standards SGP.02 and SGP.22, the use of which will be affected by the growing adoption of the latest standard. The report gives our expectations of the proportions of shipments of cellular-based IoT connections that will use each of those three technology standards, as well as the overall adoption of standards-based RSP.

The analysis involves examining each IoT application in the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database to assess the likelihood that each would use SGP.02, SGP.22 or SGP.32. The database contained 270 applications, of which 164 make use of cellular-based connectivity. The key determining factors for the use, or not, of the RSP standards for each of the IoT applications include: geographical distribution, coverage challenges, lifetime of the device, data volumes, price and power considerations, whether the device is attended and device UI/features, and choice of radio technology. Devices are categorised based on the ability to use RSP, but it is not necessary for the device to have actually done so. Based on this, our definition of a capable device is as follows:

• SGP.02 – Devices bound to an operator’s SM-DP/SM-SR. Devices are given an initial association at time of manufacture.
• SGP.22 – Devices with a Local Profile Assistant (LPA), either on the eSIM (LPAe) or separately on the device (LPAd).
• SGP.32 – Devices with an IoT Profile Assistant, either on the eSIM (IPAe) or separately on the device (IPAd) which is associated with an eSIM IoT Remote Manager (eIM), or potentially more than one.

The report is available as part of the Transforma Insights Advisory Service.