Author: Dr Jack Howley, Technology Analyst at IDTechEx
The global sensor market is well established, with hundreds of millions of sensors produced yearly. Yet the market remains in flux, with trends in future mobility, edge computing, AI, and digital healthcare continuously evolving and reshaping sensor technology requirements. IDTechEx predicts that the global sensor market will be worth US$253B by 2035, with emerging sensor technology innovations within photonics, quantum sensing, edge sensing, and IoT representing the fastest growing sensor market segments.
Sensor technology is ubiquitously applied within modern electronic equipment and devices. The ability to detect and convert physical input into an electrical signal for processing sees sensors routinely employed in communications, transport, industry, healthcare, energy, consumer, and agriculture applications.
While sensors contribute just a fraction of the annual revenue generated by major electronics companies, sensor technology nevertheless represents a multi-billion-dollar global market. In 2025, commoditized sensor technology, such as semiconductor, optical, and conventional transducers (electromechanical, electrochemical), command the majority of market share by revenue.
Ten-year global sensor market forecast (2025-2035), segmented by sensor technology. Source: IDTechEx – “Sensor Market 2025-2035: Technologies, Trends, Players, Forecasts”
Within these established sensor markets, design trends focus on improved integration and performance within products and applications. Emerging sensor technologies must compete through reduced size and power, offer the ability to measure more metrics, for longer, with greater sensitivity and accuracy, and be integrated into new form-factors.
Looking beyond established sensor markets, emerging global technology mega-trends are reshaping sensor technology requirements, presenting renewed growth opportunities to original equipment manufacturers. Future mobility (autonomy, electrification, and driver monitoring), Internet of Things (IoT) expansion, growing AI integration, wearable technology adoption, and the commercialization of 6G all demand unique sensing requirements.
Key sensor markets and technologies covered in IDTechEx’s “Sensor Market 2025-2035: Technologies, Trends, Players, Forecasts” report. Source: IDTechEx
A bright future for sensors in future mobility
Trends in electrification, automation, in-cabin monitoring, and software-defined vehicles are drastically changing sensing needs in the automotive sector. For example, temperature, current, voltage, and gas sensors are required for battery monitoring within electric vehicles, while LiDAR, radar, infrared imaging, and camera technology are essential for autonomous vehicles.
Increasing vehicle autonomy will transform passenger-vehicle interactions, with automotive sensor technology poised to play a key role in ensuring safety as well as unlocking personalized passenger experiences. Infrared, time-of-flight (ToF), and radar sensors can be used for in-cabin monitoring in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) to check if the driver is focused on the road. In the future, offering increased passenger-vehicle interaction and biometric authentication will empower features-as-a-service business models to emerge in connected software-defined vehicles.
Future mobility will rely on sensor technology to enable the next evolution of transportation and passenger-vehicle experiences.
Wearable sensor market continues to evolve after a decade of expansion
The wearable sensor technology landscape covers a wide range of sensor types, which can be integrated into an array of wearable form-factors. Motion sensors, optical sensors and imaging, wearable electrodes, force, strain, temperature, and chemical sensors are all applied across medical, consumer, AR/XR, and industrial applications.
The last decade has been characterized by the success of smartwatches and fitness trackers, as well as the disruption of the glucose test strip market by continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). In the wake of this disruption, large-scale opportunities in wearables are harder to come by. Looking ahead, there are still many exciting innovations in wearable sensors, now arguably seeking to enter nicher beach-head markets as the demand to refine them for smaller, application-specific verticals increases.
IoT sensor demand persists, but adoption and roll out remains slow
IoT remains a key high-volume target market for sensors, with solutions promising smart devices that are ‘greater than the sum of their parts’. While IoT sensors are widely employed in logistics, agriculture, industry, and building automation, the emergence rate has consistently been underwhelmed. Despite this, industrial, environmental, and consumer IoT applications continue to be developed at pace by sensor manufacturers.
Industrial IoT (IIoT) employs sensor networks to collect, monitor, and analyze data from industrial operations. Key emerging applications for IIoT sensor technology include industrial robotics and automation, machine health monitoring and predictive maintenance, worker safety, inventory management, and logistics. Data insights from IIoT solutions offer efficiency optimizations, improved safety, productivity, and reduced operating costs.
Gas sensors are key elements within environmental IoT solutions, where indoor air quality and outdoor pollution monitoring lead interest. Tightening regulations and recommendations for outdoor air quality are increasing the need for sensitive gas sensors. Key gas sensor technologies in environmental and consumer IoT include optical particle counters, metal oxide sensors, electrochemical sensors, infra-red sensors, photo-ionization detectors, and photoacoustic sensors.
The long return on investment (ROI) period for IoT solutions remains a key challenge. High initial capital investment, operational downtime, and legacy infrastructure integration represent barriers to adoption of IoT technology. These challenges are largely independent of the underlying IoT sensor technology but nevertheless impact the sensor market growth rate.
Edge sensors combine edge computing and AI
Over the last decade, the commercialization and advancement of energy-efficient, high-performance CPUs are driving computing toward the edge. Edge computing integration within sensors enables lower latency smart functionality, with reduced overall energy consumption and reduced data privacy concerns.
Edge sensors are increasingly being co-developed with AI capability to offer greater device intelligence. The emergence of neural processing units (NPUs) is enabling edge AI integration within endpoint devices (e.g., using small and medium language models locally). Edge AI integration within sensors promises predictive and prescriptive functionality for greater device automation in most application markets.
Edge sensor technology is compelling in time-critical applications where large data volume is generated. Key edge sensing market applications include occupancy detection in smart buildings, predictive maintenance in industrial IoT, and activity and vital sign monitoring in medical wearables.
Sensor hardware innovations continue to expand sensor market possibilities
While global technology trends reshape many established sensor markets, sensor hardware innovation will play a key role in enabling future applications.
Novel material platforms with maturing sensor applications offer new form factors and cost savings over incumbent solutions. Printed and flexible sensors, including advanced carbon sensors, can be produced in large areas for capacitive touch, force, temperature sensing, and photodetection applications.
Following the successful commercialization of quantum dots within the display industry, quantum dot image sensors are emerging onto the market and are poised to disrupt. QD-on-CMOS short-wave infrared sensors are at least an order of magnitude cheaper than incumbent InGaAs sensors, which will unlock high-volume applications such as vehicle ADAS systems.
Looking forward, the sensor market embarks into the unknown as commercial development of quantum sensor technology ramps up. With significant investment pouring into quantum technology, key players, including Intel, Philips, and STMicroelectronics, are moving to capitalize on interest. Quantum sensors, such as atomic clocks and inertial navigation sensors, initially look to target applications in aerospace and defense where high sensitivity and state-of-the-art sensor performance are paramount.
Market outlook
IDTechEx’s latest report on the topic, “Sensor Market 2025-2035: Technologies, Trends, Players, Forecasts”, provides a comprehensive overview of the global sensor technology market, with insights and critical analyses drawn from 14 related IDTechEx reports covering sensor technology. The report characterizes and evaluates emerging sensor application markets in future mobility, IoT, wearable technology, printed electronics, and edge computing. The report contains ten-year global sensor market forecasts from 2025-2035, segmented by sensor technology, including semiconductor sensors, gas sensors, automotive and aerospace sensors, biosensors, sensors for future mobility, image sensors, and silicon photonic sensors.
To find out more about this new IDTechEx report, including downloadable sample pages, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Sense.
For the full portfolio of market research from IDTechEx, including sensors, wearable technology, future mobility, and quantum technologies, please see www.IDTechEx.com/Research.
Upcoming free-to-attend webinar
Which Technology Innovations Will Be Most Disruptive in the Global Sensor Market?
IDTechEx Senior Technology Analyst Dr Tess Skyrme, will be presenting a free-to-attend webinar on the topic on Thursday 7 November 2024 – Which Technology Innovations Will Be Most Disruptive in the Global Sensor Market?
In this webinar, IDTechEx will overview the state of the sensor market today and outline how it is expected to evolve across the next ten years. This webinar will include:
- An overview of meta-trends shaping the sensor market landscape.
- A summary of major market verticals, product types, and leading technologies.
- Coverage of near-term trends in sensor technology development, adoption, and integration – including the impact of AI on edge sensing.
- An overview of disruptive emerging sensor technologies recently commercialized, their value proposition, advantages, and market challenges. This includes printed sensors, quantum sensors, emerging image sensors, biosensors, gas sensors, and nanocarbon sensors.
- Case studies in fast-growing markets for sensors technology, both established and emerging, such as future mobility, wearables, and IoT (industrial, consumer, and environmental).
- Initial ten-year forecasting insights and sensor market outlook for the next ten years.
We will be holding exactly the same webinar three times in one day. Please click here to register for the session most convenient for you.
If you are unable to make the date, please register anyway to receive the links to the on-demand recording (available for a limited time) and webinar slides as soon as they are available.
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