South Korea-based internet-of-things firms posted revenue of over 10 trillion won in 2019, up 16.2 percent on-year, according to the ICT Ministry on Tuesday.

This is the first time for IoT companies have crossed the revenue milestone since the ministry began collecting relevant figures in 2014.

Domestic sales accounted for 89 percent with 9.7 trillion won. Exports accounted for the remaining 1.2 trillion won. Exports have shown an average annual increase of 46.3 percent from 2015-19, the ministry said.

By sector, the sales of IoT devices recorded 4.47 trillion won in 2019, claiming the largest share of 41 percent among other segments -- services, platform, network and devices.

The sales of IoT-based home appliances were not included in the statistics.

The network sector marked the highest sales growth last year, reaching 1.88 trillion won, up 25.2 percent on-year. The increase was largely attributable to the sales of 5G mobile networks equipment and increasing use of IoT network services, the ministry explained.

The service sector logged 2.8 trillion won in sales. In particular, IoT services related to facility management, construction, safety and environment accounted for 1.9 trillion won, the highest portion.

The platform sector recorded 1.7 trillion won in sales.

In 2019, the number of employees in the IoT industry here also increased by 3,793 to reach 77,734. It is expected to increase by around 4,300 this year, the ministry noted.

The ICT Ministry surveyed 2,313 local companies (2,204 companies in 2018) in the local IoT industry. About 601 firms responded to the survey, it said.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)