A new study from Juniper Research has found that total annual spend on Mobile Edge Computing (the collection and analysis of data at the source of generation, at the Edge of the network, instead of a centralized location such as the cloud), will reach $11.2 billion by 2024. This is up from an estimated $1.3 billion in 2019, with an average annual growth of 52.9%.

The research group ranked leading players in the Edge processing sector by a range of factors, such as the depth of their experience in IoT, their geographical footprint, along with the number, and type, of industries served. The top five players are: Siemens, Bosch, AWS, VWWare, and Telit.

Juniper Research believes that mobile operators will play an important role in connecting Edge processing devices via 5G, particularly for smart city initiatives, due to the large numbers of device users they serve, as well as their ownership of mobile spectrum and local real estate assets. 

“Edge Computing and 5G, supported by continued advancements in machine learning and AI-derived algorithms, will continue to be the key drivers of Big Data analytics and complex real-time analysis at the Edge of networks,” says research author Elson Sutanto.