Global IoT Cellular Connections to Cross 5 Billion Mark by 2025, NB-IoT to contribute nearly half
Seoul, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Beijing, London, Buenos Aires, San Diego
Sep 26th, 2018
China will continue to lead by contributing almost two-thirds of the global IoT Cellular Connections. Whereas, Vodafone will continue to be the largest operator elsewhere globally if we exclude China and Chinese operators.
According to the latest research from Counterpoint’s IoT (Internet of Things) service, Global IoT Cellular Connection grew 72 % in 1H18, a considerable increase from the same period last year.
Commenting on the future growth of connected IoT devices, Counterpoint Research Analyst, Satyajit Sinha, noted, “Smart manufacturing, smart utilities and smart mobility applications such as automotive, asset tracking will be the key growth drivers over the next five to seven years. Many of these applications will demand low-power, low-bandwidth, low-cost and ubiquitous cellular connectivity which will be initially satisfied by the emerging Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) cellular technologies like LTE-M, NB-IoT, and EC-GSM-IoT. Further, futuristic applications such as autonomous cars, drones, connected healthcare, and mission-critical IoT applications will be powered by the upcoming 5G technology revolution which promises massive capacities, throughputs, and lower latencies.”
Mr. Sinha, further added, “Emerging markets like India, Brazil and in Africa while can offer tremendous scale but will likely be late followers compared to China in this path to connected everything. However, the massive growth opportunity remains in terms of cellular-IoT connections in emerging markets which will be possibly catalysed by operators such as Jio in India but more specifically from multi-market players such as Telefonica or MTN or Vodafone with plans to deploy LPWAN networks such as NB-IoT leveraging scale across their coverage markets.”
Adding his perspective, Research Director, Peter Richardson, noted, “Most of the IoT connections are still on 2G/2.5G networks. However, the shift to 4G LTE and cellular-LPWAN is already in motion and we expect an ongoing shift to these newer technologies in 2H 2018 and 2019.”
