New Delhi, Sep 27 (IANS): Global Internet of Things (IoT) cellular connections will cross five billion mark by 2025 and China will continue to lead by contributing almost two-thirds of such connections, a new report said on Friday.

According to the latest research from Counterpoint's IoT (Internet of Things) service, Global IoT cellular connection grew 72 per cent in the first half of 2018 -- a considerable increase as compared to the same period last year.

"Emerging markets like India, Brazil and Africa can offer tremendous scale but will likely be late followers compared to China in this path to connected everything," said Research Analyst Satyajit Sinha.

"However, the massive growth opportunity remains in terms of cellular-IoT connections in emerging markets which will be possibly catalysed by operators such as Jio in India but more specifically from multi-market players such as Telefonica or MTN or Vodafone," Sinha noted.

Smart manufacturing, utilities and mobility applications such as automotive and asset tracking will be the key growth drivers for IoT over the next 5-7 years.

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) will dominate the market with 45 per cent of global IoT cellular connections, due to the wide variety of application opportunities and faster adoption rates in the overall ecosystem.

"If operators are looking to capture maximum value, the strategies need to provide an end-to-end IoT solutions by bundling IoT devices, secure connectivity, platform, and data management to capitalise on the overall opportunity," said Research Director Neil Shah.

2G IoT connections will occupy less than 1 per cent of global IoT cellular connections by 2025. 3G IoT connections face the same fate as 2G.

"However, 3G will go extinct much faster than 2G," said the report.

4G LTE IoT connections (high bandwidth and low latency) will grow at a much faster rate till 2022.

"However, post-2022, we expect a smooth transition from 4G LTE family to 5G. 4G LTE IoT connections will hold slightly more than a third of global IoT cellular connections in 2025," the report noted.