By the end of 2019, 4.8 billion endpoints are expected to be in use up 21.5 per cent from 2018.
Utilities will be the highest user of IoT endpoints, totaling 1.17 billion endpoints in 2019, and increasing 17 per cent in 2020 to reach 1.37 billion endpoints.
"Electricity smart metering, both residential and commercial will boost the adoption of IoT among utilities," said Peter Middleton, Senior Research Director at Gartner.
"Physical security, where building intruder detection and indoor surveillance use cases will drive volume, will be the second largest user of IoT endpoints in 2020," Middleton added.
Building automation, driven by connected lighting devices, will be the segment with the largest growth rate in 2020 (42 per cent), followed by automotive and healthcare, which are forecast to grow 31 per cent and 29 per cent in 2020, respectively.
In healthcare, chronic condition monitoring will drive the most IoT endpoints, while in automotive, cars with embedded IoT connectivity will be supplemented by a range of add-on devices to accomplish specific tasks, such as fleet management.
In 2020, revenue from endpoint electronics will total $389 billion globally and will be concentrated over three regions: North America, Greater China and Western Europe.
These three regions will represent 75 per cent of the overall endpoint electronics revenue, the research said.
In 2020, the two use cases that will produce the most endpoint electronics revenue will be consumer connected cars and networkable printing and photocopying, totaling $72 billion and $38 billion, respectively, according to Gartner.
"Overall, end users will need to prepare to address an environment where the business units will increasingly buy IoT-enabled assets without policies for support, data ownership or integration into existing business applications," said Alfonso Velosa, Research Vice President at Gartner.
( With inputs from IANS )