A new report from ABI Research is predicting that IoT gateway shipments worldwide will go past 64 million units in 2021. The gateways manage and control connected environments by aggregating and transmitting sensor data, and translating communication protocols.

Home automation and security market components will make up more than half of all IoT gateway shipments over the next five years, the research firm says, but it predicts that the mobility, transportation segments and industrial/infrastructure that will generate the most revenue.

“The home automation and security market relies on gateways for aggregating and orchestrating communications between an increasing variety of home sensors and cloud services,” Dan Shey, managing director and VP at ABI Research, observes. “However, this segment will only represent around 30 percent of the market’s five-year value. This is because gateways in the home do not have the same requirements for ruggedness, antenna design, and processor requirements as gateways used in industrial and commercial settings.”

ABI Research finds the higher priced, albeit lower volume, sectors are mobility and transportation, as well as industrial and infrastructure. It sees IoT gateway opportunities in fleet management as small, but growing. Companies such as Omnitracs, PeopleNet and Sierra Wireless and are offering gateways for multi-application communications in fleet vehicles, such as critical event reporting, fault monitoring and navigation. The industrial and infrastructure market segment relies on many traditional markets like smart grid and video surveillance, ABI observes, and this segment will also benefit from new higher growth markets through applications in the smart cities and manufacturing/process industries.