Two-thirds of businesses (66%) also report regular IoT connectivity issues

The majority of Internet of Things (IoT) project failures are caused by issues at the device level, according to the new 2025 State of IoT report from global IoT firm Eseye.

The research, which surveyed 1,200 senior decision-makers, found that three-quarters of businesses (76%) agree that a widespread “hardware blind spot” is undermining project success.

This is compounded by frequent connectivity problems, with two-thirds of businesses (66%) reporting that their IoT devices fail to connect “regularly” or “always” because of a hardware issue.

This leads to significant operational consequences, with the report showing that “unreliable connections are leading to a loss of operational efficiency and increased costs for 35% of IoT adopters”.

Anand Gandhi, SVP Global Enterprise Sales at Eseye, said: “For years, the focus of IoT has been on the big picture: the data, the analytics, the cloud. These findings are a stark reminder that none of it matters if the physical device in the field cannot do its job reliably.”

“An IoT deployment is only as strong as its weakest link, and this report shows that for three-quarters of businesses, that weak link is the hardware.”

“Choosing the right components, from the processor to the antenna and the SIM, isn’t just a technical detail, it’s the foundation of a successful project. Overlooking the device-level engineering is the number one reason that billions of pounds of investment in IoT are being put at risk.”