It is no secret that the use of cellular technology for IoT has fallen short of expectations that were set a decade ago. Nevertheless, cellular IoT has seen relatively strong growth over the past three years, indicating that the market is moving in a positive direction. The question remains however, if and when cellular IoT will see an 'inflection point': the stage where widespread growth towards mass adoption of a technology occurs.
By examining factors that were critical to the success of several telco trends in the past and comparing those factors to the present state of the cellular IoT ecosystem, it can be identified that many of the ingredients needed to catalyze the industry are already in place:
- Cellular IoT is reliable.
- Cellular IoT is secure.
- Cellular IoT is able to cater to specialist requirements.
- Mechanisms have been established to achieve global coverage.
Despite the presence of these ingredients, some challenges for the industry still remain. Some complexity remains over technology choice, while cellular IoT is still relatively expensive from a hardware standpoint. Flexibility to serve global deployments must be improved. This represents an ecosystem challenge that can be overcome via concerted industry action. This requires work on the part of MNOs, as well as other technical solutions that simplify the means to enable truly global deployments at relatively low cost.
Many service providers are reporting a downturn in demand in 2020, which has certainly been expected owing to supply chain bottlenecks and uncertainty surrounding immediate finances. However, it has now been established that cellular IoT can play a critical role in mitigating the negative impact experienced by businesses during the height of the pandemic. In turn, this will drive demand, beginning in 2021 and accelerating from 2022 onwards.
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