2019 in Review: A changed IoT landscape

The turn of the year has triggered many people to reflect on what they were doing 10 years ago. With that in mind, I looked through my tracker of M2M and IoT corporate initiatives to see what has changed and what we might learn about the future. The main categories of initiative include the following: technology innovation, market entry/expansion, partnering, acquisitions/investments, distributor agreements, product/service innovation, business reorganization and outsourcing.

A more tightly knit IoT value-chain 

A snapshot of the 2009 industry covers a relatively well defined mobile-industry ecosystem. This largely centered on mobile operator initiatives, driven by leading operators and supported by GSMA efforts to develop a new market for the mobile ecosystem.

A fresh look at MNOs' IoT strategy

Over the past few weeks, there have been several commentaries about IoT strategies for mobile network operators (MNOs), several of these expressed at Mobile Europe’s 2018 IoT in Telecoms conference.

Vodafone’s Director of IoT, Stefano Gastaut [1], expressed visible frustration about the ‘dumb pipe’ label attached to MNOs and the implied commoditization of connectivity. Enrico Bagnasco, Head of Innovation at TIM articulated [2] a ‘horizontal services’ view.

And, finally, Ericsson published a study [3] drawing on interviews with 20 mobile operators about the status of their IoT priorities and the strategic opportunities for growth. One highlight in Ericsson’s findings is that 70% lack a well-defined strategy. While many are testing different roles in the IoT value chain, 80% plan to move up to higher layers.

On the whole, it therefore looks as if the industry has got second wind, aiming to build on a first phase of growth, triggered by the GSMA’s ‘M2M and Beyond’ industry strategy.

So, are operators on the right track to capitalize on the opportunity or has the market passed them by?

Innovation at ETSI IoT Week 2017

Last week, I attended ETSI's IoT Week, an annual event to explore the IoT standardization landscape and to see how industry and academics, around the world, are testing IoT implementation ideas for the future. Not surprisingly, the oneM2M standard featured prominently in the program and the display zone of demonstrator projects given that ETSI is one of 8 standards development organization (SDO) partners in the oneM2M project.

However, not everything on the agenda centered on oneM2M. Other standardization efforts were also represented including: ESMIG (energy); SigFox and LoRA Alliance in the LPWAN sector; ZigBee Alliance; and, international organizations such as ISO, IEC. And, several companies, including MNOs, demonstrated how they are addressing new business and revenue opportunities beyond IoT connectivity.