Datafication Statistics By Market And Usage (2026)

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Datafication Statistics: Datafication had a huge year in 2025. Businesses everywhere turned their everyday operations, customer interactions, and even physical objects into raw data. According to market.us, the global datafication market reached around USD 409 billion in 2025, growing at a strong CAGR of about 12.3% from the year before. This growth shows just how fast companies are learning to treat data as a core business asset, not just a byproduct.

Looking ahead, 2026 is shaping up to be an even bigger year for datafication. Experts project the market will keep climbing toward USD 624 billion by 2029, fuelled by AI adoption, 5G expansion, and the growing use of IoT devices. As more industries lean on real-time data to make decisions, datafication is set to become a bigger part of daily business life than ever before.

In this article, you will get to see how datafication grew in 2025, what’s expected in 2026, and why this shift matters for businesses and industries around the world.

Best of the Best

1. The global datafication market hit around USD 409 billion in 2025, and it’s expected to keep climbing toward USD 624 billion by 2029.
2. There are now around 21.1 billion connected IoT devices worldwide, smart devices, sensors, and gadgets all feeding data into networks every second.
3. The world creates about 463 exabytes of data every single day. 
4. People spend an average of 2 hours and 21 minutes a day on social media, and that makes a total of over 14 billion hours a day on social platforms.
5. 85% of people say they want to do more to protect their privacy online, but 61% admit they still trade away that privacy for convenience.
6. Big Tech companies plan to spend up to USD 630 billion on data infrastructure in 2026 alone.

Global Datafication Market Statistics

• According to market.us, the global Datafication market is expected to grow to around USD 883 billion by 2032, up from USD 354 billion in 2024, growing at a strong rate of 12.3% each year between 2023 and 2032.
• Within this market, the services segment leads the way, making up 60% of the global market share, while the solutions segment is also expected to grow quickly as more businesses look for better datafication tools.
• When it comes to technology, cloud-based solutions are more popular, holding 53% of the market, though on-premises solutions are also growing steadily during this period.
• The BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) sector generates the most revenue at 32.5%, but other industries like retail, healthcare, IT & telecom, education, and government are increasingly adopting datafication to improve customer experience and manage data more effectively.

(Source: market.us)

IoT Sensor Data Statistics

• Ericsson’s 2025 connectivity outlook offers a complementary view of the ecosystem: it estimates 22.4 billion total IoT connections at year-end 2025, including 17.5 billion short-range connections and 4.9 billion wide-area connections.
• Sensor networks estimate compiled from Statista data places total global data creation, capture, copying, and consumption at roughly 181 zettabytes in 2025, of which IoT devices are expected to generate more than 73 zettabytes.
• According to Statista, consumer devices represented around 60% of all connected IoT devices in 2023, a share projected to remain broadly stable through the next decade, while consumer internet and media devices are forecast to exceed 17 billion units by 2033.
• Industrial datafication is becoming equally consequential because more than 100 million connected IoT devices are already deployed in several major verticals, including utilities, water and waste management, retail and wholesale, transportation and storage, and government services, according to Statista’s industry assessment.
• According to Ericsson’s reporting, around 4.5 billion cellular IoT connections at the end of 2025; of these, 2.6 billion will be broadband or critical IoT connections running over 4G and 5G technologies, enabling applications where reliability, mobility, and lower latency matter.
• Short-range connections remain the volume leader, but their role is evolving from isolated device links to dense local data-generation layers for smart homes, buildings, factories, warehouses, and healthcare facilities; Ericsson forecasts short-range IoT connections will rise from 17.5 billion in 2025 to 38.8 billion by 2031.
• McKinsey estimates that IoT could create between USD 3.9 trillion and USD 11.1 trillion in annual economic value by 2025.

Usage of Datafication

• Datafication increasingly extends beyond dashboards and descriptive reporting into decision intelligence.
• Gartner’s 2025 data-and-analytics outlook identifies a shift from purely data-driven models to decision-centric strategies that connect analytics more directly to operational choices.
• Data governance is becoming a mainstream response to the risks of broad data collection and reuse, with Precisely reporting that 71% of organizations had an active data-governance program in 2024, up from 60% in 2023.
• A survey of Fortune 1000 companies found that 98.8% were investing in data initiatives, but only 37.8% had actually established a data-driven organization.
• Gartner’s 2025 research urges data-and-analytics leaders to focus investment on business-critical use cases rather than collect data without a defined decision, workflow, or outcome in mind.
• Usage has moved increasingly into production environments, with an H1 2025 survey by Artificial Analysis finding that about 45% of organizations had AI in production while another 50% were prototyping or exploring use cases.

Social Media and Web Data Statistics

• According to the International Telecommunication Union, approximately 6 billion people, or 74% of the global population, used the internet in 2025.
• DataReportal’s Digital 2025 analysis counted 5.24 billion active social media user identities worldwide at the start of 2025, equal to 63.9% of the world’s population.
• Social-media datafication accelerated across 2025, with global user identities growing by 206 million, or 4.1% year on year.
• The average internet user spent 2 hours and 21 minutes per day on social media in early 2025, according to GWI data.
• At the global level, social platforms captured more than 14 billion hours of human attention per day in 2025, according to Talkwalker.
• Social media is now a near-universal layer of online behavior among adults, with GWI research showing that 97.3% of connected adults used at least one social network or messaging platform each month in 2025.
• DataReportal reported that the typical social-media user actively used an average of 6.5 platforms per month by late 2025.
• Short-form video, creator content, livestreaming, and algorithmic recommendations have intensified the datafication of web behavior because each session supplies platforms with granular signals about attention, dwell time, rewatches, skip behavior, interests, and probable purchase intent.

Data Privacy Concerns in Datafication Statistics

• A large majority of adults worldwide, about 85%, say they want to take stronger steps to protect their privacy online.
• Around 80% express concerns about how safe their personal information is, and 69% say they feel increasingly worried about this issue.
• Even so, 61% admit they sometimes give up their privacy just to make things more convenient for themselves.
• About 55% believe it’s basically impossible to fully protect your privacy these days, while 51% say they don’t really know how to protect it properly.
• In the United States, many people care deeply about online privacy, with 75% saying they feel vulnerable to cyberattacks.
• However, there’s a clear gap between what people believe and what they actually do: only 64% use tools to protect their privacy, and just 56% feel like they’re truly in control of their own data.
• A strong majority, 87%, want companies to be banned from selling user data to other businesses unless the user clearly agrees to it.
• Almost as many, 86%, think companies should be required to limit the amount and type of personal data they collect.
• That same number, 86%, also support stronger privacy protections specifically for people under the age of 17.
• Lastly, 82% believe people should have the legal right to seek compensation if their data is ever breached or leaked.

Recent Developments in Datafication

• Databricks held its Data + AI Summit in San Francisco from June 15–18, 2026, bringing together over 30,000 data professionals from 150+ countries and rolling out more than 20 new product launches.
• In February 2026, the “Big Four” tech giants, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, announced plans to spend up to USD 630 billion on data infrastructure in 2026, a 62% jump from USD 388 billion in 2025.
• In January 2025, ByteDance announced a USD 12 billion investment in AI chips, with USD 6.8 billion earmarked for building up its data training capacity using Nvidia hardware.
• In November 2025, Microsoft expanded its Azure OpenAI Service, IBM rolled out new AI governance and data-lineage tools in its Cloud Pak for Data platform, and Google launched upgraded analytics tools on Google Cloud.
• Microsoft’s USD 20+ billion Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin data center began Phase 1 operations in April 2026, adding major new AI and data capacity in the U.S.
• The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025, the world was creating around 463 exabytes of data every single day.
• By the end of 2025, more than 75 billion IoT devices were feeding data into networks worldwide, according to the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.

The End

In 2025, Datafication grew fast. Businesses spent big money building AI infrastructure and data centers, more people came online, and record numbers of IoT devices started collecting data nonstop. At the same time, more people are worried about their privacy. Most people say they want stronger protections, but many admit they don’t really know how to protect their own data.

Big tech companies and countries around the world are pouring billions of dollars into data infrastructure to keep up with the growth, especially as AI adoption pushes companies to collect and use even more data than before.

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