ABI Research Finds New 3GPP IoT Standards Will Account for More Than 50% of Cellular IoT Radio Node Unit Shipments by 2021

image
28 Jun 2016

ABI Research finds the new 3GPP IoT standards will account for more than 50% of cellular IoT radio node unit shipments by 2021 with NB-IoT consuming more than 70% of Release 13 shipments and more than one third of all cellular IoT shipments—a value which is greater than legacy M2M or the current Cat-1 standard.

“While some in the industry view the new 3GPP standards as competitors to the current non-3GPP LPWA technologies and predict their demise, we believe that NB-IoT will complement LPWA,” says Nick Marshall, Research Director at ABI Research. “But it is true that out of the 15 LPWA technologies we profiled, some were designed for use cases that are unsuitable for NB-IoT, such as where downlink data is not required.”

The 3GPP Release recently finalized three, new cellular LTE-based IoT standards—Cat-M1, NB-IoT, and EC-GSM—that offer a cellular alternative to proprietary unlicensed Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWA) technologies like Ingenu, LoRa, and SIGFOX. The standards make it easy to configure an LTE network through a simple software upgrade to the existing LTE radio interface, which is why ABI Research expects rapid growth and worldwide deployment of NB-IoT to start in 2017.

Pre-standard NB-IoT pilots and trials are already taking place, or are about to, with operators such as AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone working with equipment from vendors including Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, and Qualcomm.

“Ultimately, the choice of IoT radio link involves trade-offs between conflicting features, which often involve capacity, licensed versus unlicensed operation, range, reliability, battery life, cost and proprietary versus standards-based schemes,” concludes Marshall. “NB-IoT stands ready to unlock the full potential of IoT thanks to its high link budget for maximum coverage extension, low cost, and ability to reuse existing LTE networks with carrier grade reliability and security.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s IoT Wide Area Networks. This report is part of the company’s Future Networks and IoT, IoE, & M2M sectors, which include research, data, and analyst insights.

About ABI Research

ABI Research is a global technology intelligence firm delivering actionable research and strategic guidance to technology leaders, innovators, and decision makers around the world. Our research focuses on the transformative technologies that are dramatically reshaping industries, economies, and workforces today.

ABI Research提供开创性的研究和战略指导,帮助客户了解日新月异的技术。 自1990年以来,我们已与全球数百个领先的技术品牌,尖端公司,具有远见的政府机构以及创新的贸易团体建立了合作关系。 我们帮助客户创造真实的业务成果。

For more information about ABI Research’s services, contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific, or visit www.abiresearch.com.

Contact ABI Research

Media Contacts

Americas: +1.516.624.2542
Europe: +44.(0).203.326.0142
Asia: +65 6950.5670

Related Service