ARDUINO COMPATIBLE MARKET SIZE AND SHARE ANALYSIS - GROWTH TRENDS AND FORECASTS (2023 - 2030)

Market Challenges And Opportunities

• Increasing demand for prototyping devices: The demand for prototyping devices like Arduino boards is increasing rapidly due to the growing need to test and iterate on new product designs quickly and cost-effectively. Arduino boards allow engineers, designers, hobbyists, and students to prototype circuits and test product concepts without investing heavily in manufacturing. The simple architecture, open-source software, and plug-and-play components of Arduino make prototyping accessible to a broad audience. According to recent surveys, around 70% of designers and engineers use Arduino or Arduino-compatible boards for creating prototypes and proofs of concepts. The demand is being driven by startups and tech companies that are focused on developing connected devices for IoT applications. Educational institutions are also adopting Arduino boards for teaching design principles. The simplicity and flexibility of Arduino are leading to its increased use for prototyping innovative products.
• Growth of IoT and connected devices: The Internet of Things is driving strong demand for affordable and versatile microcontroller boards like Arduino to develop smart connected products. According to Coherent Market Insights analysis by 2030, there could be over 25 Million connected IoT devices deployed in various industries . Connected sensors, wearables, home automation devices, industrial automation systems, etc. require robust and quick prototyping capabilities during product development. Arduino boards can interface with virtually any sensor and are highly extensible through shields and modules. The Arduino software ecosystem provides easy-to-use libraries to get IoT prototypes up and running quickly. Startups and tech companies are leveraging Arduino's capabilities for IoT prototyping and even some stages of production. Arduino enables rapid testing of concepts and connections in an IoT product. Its accessibility is leading to broader adoption across the IoT value chain.
• Increased community engagement and knowledge sharing: Arduino has an active global community of millions of hobbyists, students, and professional engineers. Online forums, blogs, and tutorials attract many new users and drive engagement. Knowledge sharing platforms like GitHub host thousands of code samples, libraries, and projects that are open source. Online retailers offer a vast variety of compatible components and boards at competitive prices, appealing to novices and experts alike. The community provides support for troubleshooting projects. Enthusiastic meetups and events are organized in cities around the world. The community fosters a collaborative environment for learning and creating with Arduino. Forums and online resources lower the barriers for beginners to adopt Arduino for electronics projects. All these community efforts boost the popularity and adoption of Arduino and compatible boards.
• Applications in STEM education: Arduino is being widely adopted for STEM education in schools and colleges to teach the basics of coding, electronics, and design thinking. The visual programming capabilities allow students to gain hands-on experience. Affordable and versatile components available for Arduino enable students to build DIY projects like robots, weather stations, mini greenhouses, etc. There are numerous tutorials and reference designs aimed at STEM learning with Arduino. Educational institutions are investing in Arduino kits and e-learning modules. Arduino provides an engaging way for students to learn STEM principles through building creative projects, fueling adoption in the educational sector.

Arduino Compatible Market Opportunities

• Innovations in smart wearables and hearables: The wearables market is growing rapidly, with products like smartwatches, fitness trackers, VR headsets gaining popularity. Arduino and compatible boards provide a great prototyping solution for wearable product design and can bring new connected wearable ideas to market faster. Companies are innovating with e-textiles by integrating electronics into fabrics using conductive threads, allowing them to gather data. Arduino's sensors, Bluetooth modules are being used to design fashion tech and smart clothing. Startups are developing hearables like smart headphones and earbuds enhanced with biometric tracking, gestures, and voice control features. Arduino allows rapid prototyping of ergonomic and compact wearables and hearables, integrating the latest technology advances. For instance, in September 2021, Arduino Pro, a manufacturer specializing in electronic devices, joined forces with Bosch Sensortec, a manufacturer of electronic components, to establish a groundbreaking standard for intelligent sensing solutions. The latest offering from Arduino Pro, the Nicla Sense ME, incorporates cutting-edge Bosch sensor technology in its most compact form factor to date. This innovation aims to deliver advanced sensing capabilities and intelligence at the edge.
• Adoption of AI in edge devices: Artificial intelligence capabilities are being incorporated into edge devices like home automation systems, industrial IoT, and medical equipment that need to make inferences in real-time without relying on the cloud. Arduino compatible boards are adding machine learning chips and libraries for deploying AI models at the edge. For example, Seeed Studio's Wio Terminal features a built-in neural network AI accelerator. Edge inference allows time-critical systems to respond faster than waiting for data to be sent to and analyzed in the cloud. It also reduces bandwidth requirements. Arduino's versatility facilitates AI prototyping for robotics, predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring, and more. Advancements in tinyML chips and techniques will expand Arduino's capabilities in edge AI.
• Integration with voice assistants: Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are becoming ubiquitous in smart homes. Arduino boards can be leveraged to prototype unique interfaces and use cases with voice assistants that go beyond smart speakers. Voice control for custom Arduino projects in retail, hospitality, and industrial settings is an emerging opportunity. Arduino has partnered with major voice assistant platforms to release official libraries and code to link projects easily with Alexa, etc. Voice assistant capabilities can be added to existing Arduino boards using speech recognition modules. Startups are building virtual assistants for children using Arduino to create smart toys that can engage via conversational interfaces. Integrating voice control expands the scope of Arduino projects.
• Adoption in developing countries: Arduino provides a low-cost way for developers, inventors, and students in emerging economies to gain hands-on experience with cutting edge technology. The growing penetration of affordable smartphones and internet connectivity, combined with Arduino's accessibility, is opening up opportunities. Arduino is being used by entrepreneurs in developing countries for applications like monitoring agriculture, enabling e-mobility, decentralizing renewable energy, and tracking supply chains leveraging IoT and sensors. It provides a launching pad for hardware startups in countries like India, China, and Kenya to test and iterate on electronic product innovations tailored to local needs. Moreover, Arduino is empowering communities and schools to deliver engaging STEM education. Initiatives to support Arduino adoption in developing regions will drive future growth.

Arduino Compatible Market Restraints

• Rising competition from low-cost alternatives: While Arduino boards sparked the prototyping movement, several low-cost alternatives have emerged that are eroding Arduino's market share. Boards like Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, and ESP32 provide similar functionality at even lower price points. Emerging startups are selling Arduino clones at discounted prices as well, primarily relying on the open-source hardware design. Large tech companies like Qualcomm, NXP, and Microchip offer their own development boards too. While they cannot leverage Arduino's community and software assets, the low cost is an advantage in price-sensitive educational and hobbyist segments. Arduino will need to innovate on both hardware design and software tools and libraries to tackle this competition.
• Limited processing capabilities: Arduino boards are designed to be relatively simple microcontroller development boards, not full computing systems. Most current Arduino boards use 8-bit or 32-bit processors, which limits computationally intensive workloads for data analysis, machine learning inference, image recognition, etc. TinyML techniques, for example, can help somewhat, but often projects need to interact with more robust processors such as the Raspberry Pi. The development of advanced user interfaces is also hampered by the lack of on-board display screens and input devices. While extensible through shields, increasing the core processing and multi-media capabilities would expand Arduino's prototyping applications.
• Counterfeits and clones: The surging popularity of Arduino has led to widespread counterfeit boards and clones being manufactured, primarily coming out of some Asian markets. These mostly use the original Arduino board designs. Lower quality components impact performance in some cases. The counterfeit ecosystem creates confusion for beginners. While clones help drive down prices, counterfeits negatively impact Arduino's brand value. This challenge could be mitigated by the development of unique hardware and software capabilities that are more difficult for clones to replicate. The availability of counterfeit boards will also be limited by partnerships with the main distributors.

Recent Developments

New product launches

• In September 2022, Arduino is an Italian open-source hardware and software company launched the Portenta H7 Lite, a low-cost version of the Portenta H7 microcontroller board aimed at students and hobbyists. The affordable pricing makes high-end Arm Cortex technology more accessible.
• In January 2022, Adafruit is an open-source hardware company released CircuitPython 7.0 to allow DIY hobbyists to easily program supported microcontroller boards in Python. The update provides improved memory management and file system capabilities.
• In November 2021, STMicroelectronics semiconductor manufacturer launched the STM32Cube Ecosystem to simplify development with STM32 microcontrollers. The ecosystem combines software tools, embedded software, and evaluation boards.

Figure 2. Global Arduino Compatible Market Share (%), by Components, 2023