SimCom and Quectel have dominated the global 4G IoT modules market in 2017, Strategy Analytics research said.
SimCom was the leader in cellular IoT modules market in 2017, achieving better performance as compared with 2016 due to deals in China.

Quectel displaced Sierra Wireless to become the second placed cellular IoT modules vendor, having displayed rapid expansion over the last few years.

Strategy Analytics forecasts that sales of 4G IoT modules will peak within three years, sales of 5G modules will begin slowly in 2019, with 2024 a key inflection point as 5G module sales outstrip those of 4G modules.

The Automotive vertical market will be the single largest consumer of IoT cellular modules across the forecast period, but will significantly increase its market share position by 2025.

The low latency / high bandwidth benefits of 5G will allow IoT use cases where near-instantaneous communications are required, while 10-year battery life capability of 5G modems will allow for mMTC (massive Machine-Type Communications), potentially matching the life of the 5G modem to the application.

“Growth is dependent of a critical mass of 5G network deployments and in many cases low power 4G technologies (such as LTE Cat M and NB IoT) will remain perfectly sufficient in the medium term,” Andrew Brown, executive director of Enterprise and IoT Research at Strategy Analytics, said.

“The network-slicing benefits of 5G, such as being applicable for low as well as high bandwidth applications, will propel 5G to become increasingly important,” Matt Wilkins, senior analyst IoT Research at Strategy Analytics, said.

Counterpoint Research earlier said in its report that despite failed acquisition by u-blox, the Shanghai based SIMCom Wireless continues to lead the cellular module market in terms of volume with 23 percent market share growing 122 percent in H1 2017.

Canada based Sierra Wireless remained the leader in terms of revenue, capturing a third of the total cellular IoT module market.

SIMCom with 23 percent share, Sierra Wireless with 17 percent, Telit with 11 percent, Gemalto with 9 percent and U-blox with 5 percent are the leaders in the cellular IoT module market in H1 2017 in terms of the number of shipments.

Sierra Wireless with 32 percent, Gemalto with 20 percent, Telit with 18 percent, SIMCom with 9 percent share and U-blox with 7 percent are the leaders in the cellular IoT module market in H1 2017 in terms of revenue.

Chinese brands like SIMCom Wireless or Quectel are winning with affordable 2G and 3G module shipment volumes.

Integrated players such as Sierra, Telit and Gemalto are well positioned to cash on the new trends in IoT market. Cellular chipset vendors such as Qualcomm, Altair and Sequans will see more of their solutions integrated into these modules.

The value of the module hardware shipped in 2017 exceeded $2 billion. Nearly 40 percent of the cellular module market is controlled by Sierra Wireless, Gemalto Cinterion, Telit and u-Blox in 2017 against 55 percent in 2016, said ABI Research.

“High-Cat. LTE products will drive the revenues while the ultra-paired-back LTE-M and NB-IoT will drive the volume,” Jamie Moss, research director at ABI Research, said.

Currently, Western vendors control the revenue and the high LTE category market. Chinese vendors control the volume, with the bulk of their revenue coming from their portion of global high-Cat. sales.

Sierra Wireless has 23 percent of all module revenue in 2017 to become the leading player in modules market, said ABI Research.

Analyst firm Berg Insight said NB-IoT devices will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41.8 percent from 106.9 million units in 2018 to reach 613.2 million units in 2023.

Strong growth is fuelled by fast-growing demand in China where NB-IoT is set to replace 2G in mass-market applications, says Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst and author of the report.

The transition from 2G to 4G is a global trend, accelerated by NB-IoT. Vodafone had live NB-IoT services in Italy, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands in 2017 will expand to Germany, the UK and Czechia in 2018.

Deutsche Telekom launched in Germany and the Netherlands in Q2-2017 and plans to extend coverage to an additional six European countries.

Orange, TIM and Telia Company are the other European operators with live NB-IoT services in early 2018.

Telefonica will start deployments in Europe later this year. T-Mobile USA switched on NB-IoT services in Las Vegas in February this year and Verizon has confirmed plans to build a nationwide network covering 2.56 million square miles by the year-end.
Berg Insight forecasts that yearly shipments of LTE-M devices will reach 185.3 million units in 2023.

Baburajan K