Page 12 - EE Times Europe November 2021 final

12 EE|Times EUROPE

IIoT, IoT Adoption Seen on Fast Trajectory Path

Second, there is the issue of chip shortages. “Initially, we saw this as with a 44% market share, and LoRa has slipped to second place, with a
a by-product of the pandemic’s impact on the supply chain,” said Sinha. 37% share of global connections.
“However, it has become its own issue: Supply capacity could not meet As for particular industry sectors, those on the steepest upward
the global demand. curve include transportation and automotive, as well as logistics;
“This first impacted the automotive industry and then extended combined, they account for about 30% of global cellular IoT and IIoT
rapidly to other segments, including IoT,” he added, warning chipset market demand. And within those segments, asset-tracking ini-
that “in 2021, this chip shortage is expected to be a factor for up to tiatives, rather than the traditional telematics applications, have been
two more years before enough additional production capacity driving the market, growing at some 22% year on year (2020/21), said
becomes available.” Sinha. Automotive adoption of 5G is also motoring fast, he said.
As to the chip suppliers, Sinha noted, “Qualcomm is comfortably One important element to note in this generally positive outlook is
leading, and five players currently dominate the cellular IoT chip that while the increasing availability of 5G is creating novel IIoT and
market, the others being MediaTek, HiSilicon, Intel, and Unisoc. These IoT business opportunities, counterintuitively, it is also hindering the
five enjoy 93% of all 2020 global cellular IoT chipset shipments.” sector’s potential as mobile operators
Other important players focusing on the sectors include Nvidia, overhype their capabilities with regard
Sequans, Nordic Semiconductor, Silicon Labs, Altair Microchip, to band coverage.
and Dialog. This view was highlighted in an inter-
Indeed, Silicon Labs has gradually been selling off all business sec- view with Jeremy Gosteau, director of
tors not related to IoT and wireless and in September launched a range IoT product marketing at French group
of sub-1-GHz SoCs for IoT applications that combine long-range RF Sequans. The company, which operates
and energy efficiency with certified Arm PSA Level 3 security. widely in the U.S. and Japan as well as
Also involved in a serious way are Qorvo, with its RF chips; Europe, has been focusing on chips for
NXP Semiconductors, with microcontrollers; and Skyworks, with a the cellular IoT and IIoT sectors for many
range of SoCs. years and has recently entered the mod-
Every connected IoT and IIoT device that makes use of cellular con- Sequans’s Jeremy ule business as well.
nectivity, be it 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE-M, 5G, or NB-IoT, needs these chipsets. Gosteau One of the main issues is that NB-IoT
But it should be noted that the chips and chipsets can be embedded has been undervalued and perhaps over-
directly into the device’s PCB or into an IoT module that is placed hyped by operators in most territories except China, Gosteau suggested.
within the device. IoT Analytics’ research focuses on the latter of these “One of the main aspects of the problem, particularly in Europe, is that
options: cellular IoT chipsets embedded within an IoT module. operators are only just starting in a serious way to sunset their 2G and
Leading module suppliers include Quectel, Fibocom, Sierra 3G networks,” he told EE Times Europe, adding that the U.S. is perhaps
Wireless, Sequans, Thales, and Telit. two years ahead of us but that both are still behind many other markets.
From a connections point of view, the latest technology standards, “Unfortunately, it is what it is. But Europe is at last showing healthy
such as 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, and LPWA, are driving the market, while growth, and the barriers to NB-IoT are definitely coming down.”
IoT Analytics suggests that satellite IoT is a wildcard that could make He added that another key issue has been, and continues to be,
a serious impact in the latter part of its forecast period. “the serious fragmentation of the cellular and non-cellular [low-power]
Sinha noted that one of the interesting developments in the broadband versions of the offering.” Part of the problem would seem
sector is the huge gap between what is happening in China and what to be that 5G came so rapidly following Release 13 (of LTE-M and
is happening in the rest of the world. Outside of China, LTE-Cat 1 NB-IoT), which meant that operators deployed one version or the other
penetration is significantly stronger than that of NB-IoT. He esti- in different territories.
mates that LTE-Cat 1 (a subset of 4G) makes up almost a quarter Costs have also been a major stumbling block, Gosteau stressed.
(23%) of the market outside of China, yet only 12% in China. Because of the fragmentation and thus the need for higher prices
The rise of LTE-Cat 1 started in North America some years ago, when for the separate chips, rather than the huge volumes that could be
it became the go-to alternative, as these networks were being sunset achieved for just one of the options, progress had necessarily slowed.
by mobile operators. The massive migration from 2G/3G to LTE-Cat 1 A way out of this dilemma would be the commercialization
started in 2018 and “grew by 40% year on year during 2020,” said Sinha. of modules that combine and offer different versions — LTE-M,
One chipset in particular from Qualcomm, the MDM9207-1, was by far LTE-Cat 1, and NB-IoT, for instance — within the same module, “bring-
the biggest beneficiary of this huge increase, he added. Meanwhile, ing costs down to below US$10 per unit.” This means massive IoT could
Unisoc’s 8910DM is said to have grown significantly faster in the same become a reality, but probably not anytime soon, said Gosteau.
period, driving the development of the newer LTE-Cat 1 bis sub- In addition, difficult roaming issues with NB-IoT between operators
segment, which now accounts for 23% of all LTE-Cat 1 shipments. have been more or less solved, greatly improving airtime economics,
Cat 1 bis is based on the 3rd Generation Partnership Project’s he suggested.
(3GPP’s) Release 13 and is characterized by a single antenna and thus He pointed to a potentially positive development from one of the
optimized for low-power applications. The initial LTE-Cat 1 is defined biggest global carriers promoting consumer and corporate adoption of
by Release 8 and needs two receive antennas. IoT and IIoT: Vodafone. “They are talking about a huge, multi-million–
Sinha noted another important trend in the sector. In the first half unit deal around NB-IoT and arguably the industry’s biggest contract
of last year, connected devices using unlicensed LPWA — for instance, outside of China,” Gosteau said. (For full details and background, visit
long-range (LoRa) and Sigfox — had a 53% share of global LPWA con- bit.ly/3E8CMPV.)
nections, while licensed LPWA such as NB-IoT and LTE-machine–type If this is true and it comes off, it could be a huge plus for the whole
communication (LTE-M) contributed 47%. A year later, for the same sector, possibly kicking off a major trend that simply could not have
period, licensed LPWA led with a 54% share, while the unlicensed happened two years or so ago. Others would follow, indicating the
segment had a 46% share of global LPWA connections, he said. maturing of the technologies involved. ■
A key reason has already been hinted at above: NB-IoT’s tremen-
dous growth in China during the first half of 2021. The upshot is that John Walko is a technology writer and editor and a contributor to
narrowband IoT, as a single technology, now leads the LPWA market EE Times Europe.

NOVEMBER 2021 | www.eetimes.eu