Trend watch: iot, sensors & smart infrastructure in 2026

The global IoT sensors market reached $17.5 billion in 2024 and is projected to exceed $138 billion by 2032, with smart city infrastructure growing at an exceptional 30.2% CAGR—the fastest-rising end-use segment (Markets and Markets, 2024). For product and design teams in emerging markets, separating IoT sensor hype from deployable reality has become essential as infrastructure investment accelerates.

Why It Matters

Emerging markets face a distinctive infrastructure challenge: building new systems while more developed economies retrofit legacy assets. This greenfield opportunity enables leapfrog deployment of IoT-enabled smart infrastructure—skipping intermediate technologies to implement next-generation solutions directly. However, the promises of IoT vendors often exceed operational reality, particularly in environments with unreliable connectivity, extreme temperatures, and limited maintenance capacity.

The sustainability imperative intensifies this focus. Sensor-enabled smart buildings can reduce energy consumption by 30%, while IoT-optimized water distribution systems decrease non-revenue water losses by 15-25% (Fortune Business Insights, 2024). For emerging markets where infrastructure is simultaneously expanding and decarbonizing, IoT represents not optional enhancement but core design requirement.

Product and design teams must navigate conflicting pressures. Investors demand connectivity and data visibility aligned with global ESG reporting standards. Local operators require ruggedized, low-maintenance solutions tolerant of infrastructure gaps. End users need interfaces designed for actual deployment conditions—not idealized scenarios assumed by Silicon Valley product teams.

The regulatory landscape adds complexity. Emerging standards around data sovereignty, IoT security, and environmental monitoring shape buyer requirements in ways that vary dramatically across markets. Product teams designing for India face different constraints than those targeting Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa.

Key Concepts

Edge computing processes data locally rather than transmitting everything to centralized cloud servers. For emerging markets with limited connectivity, edge architectures enable IoT functionality despite intermittent backhaul. Modern edge systems incorporate AI for local anomaly detection, predictive maintenance, and autonomous decision-making.

Energy harvesting eliminates battery dependency by powering sensors from ambient sources—solar, vibration, thermal gradients, or radio frequency. The battery-free sensor market reached $51.9 million in 2024 and is projected to hit $313.6 million by 2032 at 25.2% CAGR (SNS Insider, 2024). This technology is transformative for deployments where battery replacement is impractical.

Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) provide kilometer-scale connectivity on minimal power budgets. Protocols including LoRaWAN, Sigfox, and NB-IoT enable sensors operating for years on single coin cells while communicating across challenging terrain. LPWAN deployment is growing at 32.8% annually for utility and industrial applications.

Digital twins create virtual replicas of physical infrastructure, continuously updated by IoT sensor data. These models enable simulation, predictive maintenance, and optimization without physical intervention—particularly valuable where infrastructure access is constrained.

Technology	Emerging Market Fit	Maturity	Primary Application
LoRaWAN	Excellent	Production	Agricultural monitoring, water management
NB-IoT	Good (carrier dependent)	Production	Smart metering, asset tracking
Energy harvesting	Developing	Early production	Remote environmental monitoring
Edge AI	Good	Production	Predictive maintenance, security
Battery-free sensors	Excellent	Early production	Structural monitoring, cold chain

What's Working

Agricultural Monitoring at Scale

IoT sensors for precision agriculture have achieved commercial viability in emerging markets. Soil moisture, ambient temperature, and humidity sensors connected via LPWAN enable irrigation optimization, frost warnings, and crop health monitoring. The economics work: sensor networks costing $50-100 per hectare can reduce water consumption 20-30% while improving yields 10-15%.

CropX has deployed soil sensing networks across 60+ countries, with significant emerging market presence in Brazil, India, and Kenya. Their system integrates soil probes, weather data, and satellite imagery to deliver field-specific irrigation recommendations via mobile app. Farmers report 15-25% reduction in water usage with comparable or improved yields (CropX, 2024).

The design lesson: successful emerging market IoT emphasizes practical farmer interfaces (SMS, WhatsApp, voice) over sophisticated dashboards assuming reliable smartphone connectivity.

Water Utility Transformation

Non-revenue water—water produced but not billed due to leaks, theft, or metering errors—exceeds 40% in many emerging market utilities. IoT-based leak detection and pressure management directly address this challenge, with deployments demonstrating 15-25% reduction in losses.

India's Smart Cities Mission has driven IoT water infrastructure deployment across 100 cities. Pune's smart water grid integrates 50,000+ sensors monitoring pressure, flow, and quality across the distribution network. Real-time data enables targeted leak repair, reducing non-revenue water from 38% to 24% over three years (Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs India, 2024).

Energy Harvesting for Remote Monitoring

Battery replacement in remote locations—transmission line sensors, environmental monitors, structural health systems—represents prohibitive maintenance burden. Energy harvesting sensors eliminate this constraint.

Everactive produces batteryless industrial sensors powered by ambient heat and light, with demonstrated 20-year operational lifespans. Their systems monitor steam traps, motors, and HVAC equipment without battery changes, particularly valuable for distributed infrastructure across challenging terrain. Early emerging market pilots in mining and oil/gas demonstrate viability in harsh environments (Everactive, 2024).

What's Not Working

Myth: "5G Enables Everything"

Product teams frequently overestimate 5G availability and underestimate power requirements. While 5G promises transformative bandwidth and latency, coverage in emerging markets remains concentrated in urban cores. Rural and peri-urban areas—where much infrastructure monitoring occurs—rely on 3G/4G at best, with significant coverage gaps.

Moreover, 5G radios consume significantly more power than LPWAN alternatives, making battery-powered 5G sensors impractical for most applications. Design teams must validate actual connectivity conditions rather than assuming roadmap coverage.

Myth: "Data Creates Value Automatically"

Many IoT deployments generate massive data volumes with minimal actionable insight. Product teams focus on sensor sophistication while underinvesting in analytics, visualization, and integration with operational workflows. The result: dashboards nobody uses and sensors nobody maintains.

Successful emerging market deployments emphasize closed-loop automation over open-ended data collection. A smart irrigation system that automatically adjusts valves based on soil moisture delivers value; a system requiring agronomist interpretation of complex datasets does not.

Reality: Security Remains Immature

IoT security vulnerabilities expose critical infrastructure to attack. The 2024 EU IoT Regulation establishes security requirements for connected devices sold in Europe, but emerging markets lack equivalent frameworks. Product teams designing for these markets face commercial pressure to minimize security investment that doesn't translate to visible features.

This creates both risk and opportunity. Products meeting EU security standards while remaining affordable for emerging markets can differentiate on trustworthiness as high-profile breaches increase buyer sophistication.

Reality: Interoperability Gaps Persist

Sensor systems from different vendors rarely communicate effectively. A water utility deploying flow sensors from Vendor A, pressure sensors from Vendor B, and quality sensors from Vendor C faces integration nightmares. Proprietary protocols and incompatible data formats undermine promised system-wide optimization.

Standards like Matter (for consumer IoT) and emerging industrial equivalents aim to address this, but adoption remains limited. Product teams must design for realistic heterogeneous deployments, not idealized single-vendor scenarios.

Key Players

Established Leaders

Bosch Sensortec supplies MEMS sensors for consumer and industrial IoT, with 2024 launches including the BHI380 AI-enabled sensor for wearables and edge devices. Strong emerging market distribution through established automotive and industrial channels.

Texas Instruments provides ultra-low-power MCUs enabling energy-harvesting sensor designs. Their reference designs accelerate emerging market product development for companies lacking silicon expertise.

STMicroelectronics offers comprehensive IoT portfolios from sensors through connectivity, with strong presence in industrial and automotive applications across emerging markets.

Honeywell integrates sensors with building management and industrial control systems, offering turnkey smart infrastructure solutions appropriate for large-scale emerging market projects.

Emerging Startups

Everactive (Santa Clara) — Batteryless industrial sensors using proprietary energy harvesting, eliminating maintenance burden for remote infrastructure monitoring.

Soracom (Tokyo) — IoT connectivity platform with global SIM and cloud services, simplifying multi-country emerging market deployments.

Fybr (St. Louis) — Smart city sensor platform for parking, environmental, and traffic monitoring with significant emerging market installations.

Tesselo (Lisbon) — Satellite and IoT integration for agricultural monitoring, combining space-based and ground-based sensing for cost-effective coverage.

Key Investors & Funders

Intel Capital — Active emerging market IoT investor, with portfolio companies spanning sensors, connectivity, and applications.

Qualcomm Ventures — Funding companies building on cellular IoT connectivity, aligned with carrier partner distribution.

World Bank Group — Major funder of smart city and infrastructure digitization projects across emerging markets through IFC and direct lending.

Asian Development Bank — Supporting IoT-enabled infrastructure across Asia-Pacific emerging markets through technical assistance and project finance.

Examples

Pune Smart Water Grid (India): The Pune Municipal Corporation deployed 50,000+ IoT sensors across its water distribution network under India's Smart Cities Mission, monitoring pressure, flow, and quality at distribution points. The system detected over 8,000 leaks in its first year, enabling targeted repair that reduced non-revenue water from 38% to 24%. Design teams integrated dashboards with mobile field service apps, enabling technicians to receive repair assignments and close work orders via smartphone. The project demonstrates that emerging market smart water success requires equal investment in sensor infrastructure and operational workflow integration (Pune Smart City Development Corporation, 2024).
CropX Precision Agriculture in Kenya: Israeli AgTech company CropX expanded soil sensing networks to smallholder farmers in Kenya through partnership with local agricultural cooperatives. The system combines buried soil sensors measuring moisture at multiple depths with weather station data and satellite imagery. Irrigation recommendations delivered via SMS—not smartphone apps—account for actual farmer connectivity. Pilot farms demonstrated 22% reduction in water usage with 12% yield improvement for maize cultivation. The design lesson: emerging market product success requires meeting users where they are, not where product teams wish they were (CropX, 2024).
PT Telkom Smart City Platform (Indonesia): Indonesia's telecommunications leader PT Telkom deployed its DigiCity platform across 15 cities, integrating IoT sensors for traffic management, flood monitoring, and air quality. The platform uses LoRaWAN for sensor connectivity, reducing dependence on cellular coverage while enabling low-power operation. Integration with existing government systems—rather than parallel dashboards—drove adoption by municipal staff. The standardized platform approach enables rapid replication across Indonesia's diverse urban environments while maintaining local customization (PT Telkom, 2024).

Action Checklist

Audit actual connectivity: Map real network coverage (not carrier claims) across deployment footprint
Prioritize edge processing: Design for intermittent connectivity with local AI/analytics capability
Validate power assumptions: Test battery life under actual environmental conditions, not laboratory specs
Plan for heterogeneity: Build integration layer accommodating sensors from multiple vendors
Design maintenance workflows: Consider who replaces sensors, checks connectivity, and updates firmware
Engage local operators: Validate interfaces and workflows with actual end users before finalizing design
Map standards requirements: Identify applicable regulations for IoT security, data sovereignty, and environmental monitoring

FAQ

Q: How should product teams evaluate LPWAN options for emerging markets? A: Evaluate based on existing infrastructure. NB-IoT requires cellular carrier deployment and works well where carrier partnerships exist. LoRaWAN can be self-deployed using unlicensed spectrum, providing control but requiring gateway infrastructure investment. Sigfox operates as a service where available. For most emerging markets, LoRaWAN offers the best balance of coverage flexibility and ecosystem maturity.

Q: What security standards should emerging market IoT products meet? A: Even without local mandates, design to EU Cyber Resilience Act and ETSI EN 303 645 standards. These represent emerging global benchmarks that sophisticated buyers will increasingly require. Security-by-design also reduces liability exposure and enables market expansion into regulated jurisdictions.

Q: How do carbon intensity standards affect IoT infrastructure products? A: IoT systems supporting energy efficiency, emissions monitoring, or resource optimization increasingly require documentation for buyer ESG reporting. Design data outputs compatible with GHG Protocol, CDP reporting, and emerging Scope 3 requirements. Products demonstrating measurable carbon reduction create differentiated value.

Q: What project finance considerations affect IoT infrastructure sales? A: Development finance institutions (World Bank, ADB, IFC) increasingly require digital infrastructure components in funded projects. Products meeting their procurement standards—including sustainability criteria, local content requirements, and competitive bidding compatibility—access substantial project pipelines inaccessible through commercial channels.

Q: How should teams approach additionality claims for climate-focused IoT products? A: Document baseline conditions before deployment and measure changes attributable to the IoT system. Third-party verification strengthens claims. Avoid implying carbon credits without verified methodologies—regulators and buyers are increasingly skeptical of unsubstantiated environmental claims.

Sources

Markets and Markets. (2024). IoT Sensors Market Size, Share, Latest Trends & Industry Growth.
Fortune Business Insights. (2024). Smart Infrastructure Market Size & Industry Report.
SNS Insider. (2024). Battery-Free Sensors Market Size Report.
Global Market Insights. (2024). IoT Sensors Market Size & Statistics Report.
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs India. (2024). Smart Cities Mission: Progress Report.
CropX. (2024). Agricultural IoT Deployment Case Studies.