eSIM Device Count Projected to Reach 1.5 Billion in 2026

Juniper Research counted 1.2 billion devices using eSIMs during 2025 and projects 1.5 billion for 2026, a roughly 30 percent rise in a single year, with 4.9 billion cellular connections expected to run on eSIM by 2030.

Growth figures for a component are usually less interesting than what is driving them, and here the driver is a change in who benefits. eSIM began as a convenience for phone users and a way to shrink a board. In IoT it is a commercial instrument: a fleet whose operator can be changed without physical access has a different negotiating position at contract renewal than one whose SIMs are soldered to a single agreement.

That also explains why the enterprise adoption reportedly runs ahead in automotive, logistics and smart city deployments. Those are the three sectors where devices are numerous, physically inaccessible once installed, and often crossing borders — the exact combination where swapping a SIM by hand is impossible and roaming charges make operator choice a recurring cost rather than a one-time decision.