A report from Juniper Research claims that revenue from travel embedded SIM (eSIM) packages will grow by 85% in 2025.

Packages will reach $1.8 billion by the end of the year compared to $989 million clocked in 2024, says Juniper. The growth is attributed to the increasing cost-effectiveness of travel eSIM packages which offer "an attractive alternative to traditional mobile roaming services."

According to the report, heightened competition in the market is also propelling the growth. This has been driven by diminished entry barriers, and enabled by Connectivity-as-a-Service platforms which simplify infrastructure and service management, meaning businesses can quickly launch travel eSIM offerings, we're told.

It asserts that to capitalise on this, eSIM providers "must increasingly differentiate their services both through pricing and offering value-added features."

The growth of the market is ending a reliance on roaming services or buying local SIM cards at the destination of travel, says the report. Juniper expects that travel eSIMs will disrupt the roaming market, but that they will also open the market of "silent roamers" which would traditionally just use wifi or not bother with connectivity at all.

Next year, the firm expects more network operators to roll out their own travel eSIM offerings to go alongside existing roaming services. Since there will be a growing number of providers enter the space, launching their own travel eSIMs "will become critical for mobile operators to retain roaming revenue and avoid losing market share to third-party providers," says the report.

"As third parties increasingly integrate themselves in the telecoms sphere, it will be pivotal in 2026 that operators launch their own travel eSIM services to compete and retain as much revenue as possible from mobile roaming," said Molly Gatford, Senior Research Analyst at Juniper Research.

Another factor in the growth is apparently the increased penetration of eSIM-compatible devices within the smartphone market.

"In the handset market there has been an increase in the number of eSIM-compatible devices, with all new iPhones since the iPhone XS, Samsung phones since the S20, and recent tablets and smartwatches having the option of using an eSIM as a dual SIM," states the report. "Xiaomi, Vivo, and Nokia (HMD Global) launched their first eSIM-compatible devices in 2022, and Honor and TCL Communications launched their first eSIM models during the first half of 2023."

We're told that Apple has spearheaded the adoption of eSIM-compatible devices, but Android devices have now accelerated the use of it. It forecasts that the number of smartphones which have eSIMs will grow from 2.8 billion in 2025 to more than 5.6 billion by 2030.

Travel eSim market forecasted to grow 85% this year