Shifting Paradigms Set to Shape 6G

How is North America affecting policy change and industry competition?

The participation of White House and Congressional speakers at 6G World’s recent symposium shine a light on the strategic prioritization of next generation communications systems. Political participation matters in the context of 6G leadership ambitions, the practicalities of which I outlined in this three-part article series for 6G World - 1: Leadership, 2: Purpose, 3: Leverage. 

The event was equally important for shedding light on how industry stakeholders are approaching emerging 6G topics and market development activities. The mix of discussions spanned academic research, commercial and operational implications of 6G, industry competition, long-term Federal funding programs, policy priorities, standardization, and vertical-industry requirements. Rather than summarize each panel discussion chronologically, here are several threads that ran through the different sessions, beginning with the need to learn from the past. 

2020 in Review: Corporates Adapt Their IoT Business Models

This review of 2020 corporate initiatives in the IoT market builds on a history of tracking strategic industry developments for over a decade. Two sets of corporate events that bookended the start and end of 2020 provide instructive examples of the roadmap and dead ends that characterize today’s IoT market. In the intervening months, organizations in different parts of the industry ecosystem bolstered their IoT strategies. Some developed complementary capabilities through M&A while others addressed go-to-market issues through business reorganization and product-innovation initiatives. For many organizations, however, there remain challenges in balancing short term imperatives with strategic positioning goals. There is a degree of comfort in embracing the familiar. The risk is that this leads to an under-investment in properly integrating new business approaches and complementary technologies.

2017 in Review: Making the IoT work

Looking back over notable, M2M/IoT corporate initiatives in 2017, mobile network operators (MNOs) and technology vendors were the two most active groups in the industry eco-system.

The main feature amongst MNOs was market expansion into new geographies. Sometimes, this happened individually; more often, it took the form of partnering with other network operators. This is a classic growth model for the mobile operator community.

In the technology vendor community, leading initiatives took the form of: acquisitions/investments; partnering (with MNOs, platform providers and system integrators); and, product innovation.

In comparative terms, activity among platform organizations was subdued. And, end-users barely featured among 2017 initiatives. It is likely that these last two data points mask a higher level of internal activity targeting operational scaling and in-house developments as firms solidify their foundations in the IoT market. As an example, Altair, a provider of engineering software to enterprise customers, acquired the Carriots IoT platform. This initiative illustrates the trend to internalize IoT capabilities and has parallels with the earlier acquisition of ThingWorx by PTC [1].

Review of M2M Corporate Events in 2013

2013 as a whole was another year of strong corporate activity in the M2M market. A total of 147 events easily surpassed the 115 events that were recorded in 2012. These events include: announcement of an industry changing technology breakthrough; market entry/expansion initiatives; strategic partnering; investment-related acquisitions or divestitures; distribution agreements along the value chain; product innovation and outsourcing of key service delivery capabilities.

While 2013 saw many more companies taking to the press wires to publicize their sales wins, these are not recorded here as corporate initiatives. If anything, sales wins are the consequence of one or more corporate strategy commitments made in prior years.

An important development that occurred over the course of 2013 was a shift in sentiment to promote IoT in preference to M2M. This began with a raft of announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2013. Momentum continued to build around the IoT theme due to significant publicity drives and business commitments by large organizations such as ARM, Bosch, Cisco, GE and Intel.

Managing M2M inside an MNO

France’s Orange has a long history in the M2M market and was one of the early pioneers in establishing an M2M competence centre, leveraging the deep expertise of its M2M team, notably in the Belgian market. It was therefore interesting to see Orange Business Services’ announcement of a strategic partnership to use Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform (DCP).

Orange has operating companies in several different countries and is also a partner with Deutsche Telekom in the UK’s Everything Everywhere. Orange is separately a partner with Deutsche Telekom, TeliaSonera and Telecom Italia in the Global M2M Association. In light of these different constituents, one interpretation of the Orange/Ericsson partnership is as a neutral platform that many, if not all, of the M2M operating businesses can buy into.

If this is indeed the strategy, it would shift the responsibility for coordinating multiple platforms, capabilities and expertise onto Ericsson. Channel and account management responsibilities would then more naturally fall on to individual operating businesses.

To get a sense of the coordination challenges and operational complexities that arises in enterprise-grade and multi-platform environments, it is instructive to look at another company, Telefónica.

Smart Home Platform Innovator Strategies

Early in 2012, I completed a study for the GSM Association (GSMA) on the topic of new business models that would be linked to innovative, connected-device applications. This study laid out a sequence of value propositions, as companies seek to move up the value chain. In order to bring these new value propositions to market, new and innovative business models would need to be designed.

In the early days of M2M, the value proposition was all about connectivity. This would make stand-alone devices ‘smart’ and the business challenge was largely about how connectivity could be ‘embedded’ inexpensively. Later on, the market evolved as companies started to care about deployment, reliability and the user-experience issues. This ushered in a new value proposition around managed connectivity and several specialist platform providers have emerged in their own right or as partners to mobile operators.

The final two sources of value that were identified included the delivery of ‘platform innovator’ and ‘stewardship’ services. The connected devices market has been moving in these directions with three companies – Arrayent, Deutsche Telekom’s Qivicon and Zonoff – investing their energies in the platforms arena.

M2M Corporate Initatives - Strong H1-2013

Over the first half of 2013, there has been strong evidence that companies in the M2M market are continuing to implement a range of business strategies to capture new M2M service and revenue opportunities. Specifically:

• the number of corporate initiatives is more than double that for the corresponding period in 2012

• the market is no longer entirely driven by supply-side companies; several enterprises have strategically embraced M2M connectivity and have either partnered with mobile network operators or they are taking the lead role in developing new services

Connected-device business models in the US Market

(published in RCR Wireless - 26 Nov 2012)

A previous article in RCR Wireless magazine highlighted the topic of new M2M business models with reference to the size and characteristics of this fast growing market opportunity. It also highlighted the central role that communications service providers (CSPs) occupy in the eco-system. Beyond traditional data plans, however, what are the new business models that will allow the full market potential to be attained?