Home automation is an active market with many players approaching it from different angles: Technology giants: Apple (HomeKit, iOS), Google (Nest, Android), Samsung and Microsoft (Xbox, Windows) best exemplify this segment. These companies leverage the operating system of mobile devices, their incumbency in the Internet platform business, and the Cloud infrastructure to expand into the connected home market.… Read More »
The home automation market is undergoing a progressive transformation propelled by the proliferation of smartphones and tablets. In addition to cellular technologies, home automation devices integrate different local and personal area technologies to connect among peripherals. This led to a new phase of evolution in home automation systems where wireless technologies enable connectivity for monitoring and control from… Read More »
The wide-area IoT connectivity battle which has been brewing for a couple of years is heating up. Early last month at CES, Ericsson announced the release of “the first complete cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) solution” to AT&T. At the same time, the Wi-Fi Alliance branded 802.11ah as Wi-Fi HaLow targeting applications in smart home, connected car, digital healthcare, industrial, retail, agriculture, and… Read More »
Hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into the low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT connectivity market over the past 2 years alone to kick start a fledgeling ecosystem of companies across a wide range of products and services. In the process of due diligence and research in this market that we undertook at Xona Partners, we find the following key… Read More »
The following excerpts are from a paper we recently published in collaboration with Hot Telecom on the business opportunity for wholesalers in IoT. Here, I capture the opportunity for the enterprise and transport sectors, but we also address the consumer sector. You can download the paper at this link to begin exploring recommendations for international wholesale carriers. Opportunities in… Read More »
You don’t need to be a wireless carrier to operate an LPWA network and provide IoT connectivity services to hundreds of thousands of devices. LPWA technologies operate in unlicensed spectrum which opens a wide door to anyone to play in the IoT connectivity space, including of course mobile network operators (MNOs). But is LPWA for MNOs? Or more… Read More »
Telenor Norway announced it will shut down 3G network in 2020; five years before 2G. This is yet another example of how operators in Europe are diverging from North American operators by opting to shut down 3G ahead of 2G. 3G is much less efficient in carrying data traffic than LTE which is twice better. 2G/GPRS is the… Read More »
There has been a flurry of activities related to wide-area Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. The market recognizes that existing technologies, and more importantly business models and cost structures do not scale to meet IoT application requirements. A number of competing solutions have emerged and are today vying for commercial validation which scales through standardization. Hence, there is… Read More »
It seems many are convinced that the magic number for device cost in cellular M2M applications is $5. What should be the cost of a module, and how critical an issue is the device cost to start with, is a topic of debate and although I have my view on it, it is not what I will address… Read More »
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the catalyst for a number of new standards that will reshape wireless connectivity as we know it. Examples: Bluetooth LE, LTE-MTC, Zigbee, and LPWA standards. Wi-Fi (802.11) is also being reshaped to accommodate IoT applications. These applications have different requirements which make connectivity techniques for IoT fragmented. Competition is not limited to… Read More »
It’s official: The ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) is at the peak of the hype cycle. It only took 15 years to get to this point, considering the term was first coined in 1999. But the IoT of today is quite different from initial thrust which was in commercial and industrial applications. Today, consumer applications lead the hype. IoT,… Read More »
A mix of connectivity technologies combines to enable the Internet of Things. These technologies can be complementary or competitive in nature. Determining which fits and which does not starts with the application use case and the user requirement. For most IoT applications there is no need for broadband connectivity. Rather, what is required is a reliable connectivity to… Read More »
$19 Trillion is a lot of money. That’s the value Cisco expect the Internet of Things (IoT) market will generate over the next 10 years. Compare with annual world GDP of 75 Trillion, IoT will make for about 2%. Not bad. In terms of devices, the talk is for 50 billion connected devices in 2020, other estimates from… Read More »