Vodafone leads in IoT cellular connectivity: Counterpoint

Chinese operators dominated the market holding more than 46 percent of IoT cellular connections, and China Mobile was the world's leading operator in terms of an Internet of Things (IoT) connections, however, outside China, Vodafone leads in IoT cellular connectivity globally research firm counterpoint said.

Counterpoint's Research Analyst, Satyajit Sinha, noted, "Cellular IoT acts as the backbone in driving secure connectivity for different devices to the internet and across different verticals."

The report said that China Mobile grew 21 percent QoQ and leads the market with 32 percent share of connections and Vodafone grew 37 percent YoY and holds the second position with 10.9 percent market share. As of 3Q2017, Vodafone had launched NB-IoT in four countries including, The Netherlands, Ireland, Czech Republic and Spain, China Unicom grew 39 percent YoY and holds third position with 9.4 percent market share and AT&T grew 23 percent YoY and holds fourth spot with 6.4 percent market share.

Meanwhile, the report pointed out that, globally IoT cellular connections grew 41 percent annually to the end of 3Q 2017, having already crossed the half billion mark earlier in 2017.

Research Director, Peter Richardson, noted, "Players such as Vodafone will be able to accelerate the NB-IoT roll-outs across multiple countries, leveraging global scale to accelerate the cellular LPWA adoption internationally. China serves as a model, where Chinese operators such as China Mobile and China Telecom are ramping up the roll-out and deployments at a rapid pace. This is also having a knock-on impact on lowering the overall module (see here), device and service costs".

Furthermore, China Telecom grew 17 percent YoY and holds the fifth place with 5 percent market share. In terms of NB-IoT, it was the fastest developing company for NB-IoT connection among Chinese operators. Asia grew 64.2 percent YoY and dominates cellular IoT connections with a 57.2 percent share. Japan And South Korea grew 15 percent and 25 percent YoY respectively. Japan holds 5 percent share and South Korea holds 2 percent share within Asia and Americas grew 20 percent YoY and holds the second position with a 19.6 percent share.

Research Director, Neil Shah, notes, "Cellular IoT operators are well-positioned to become a single and preferred source for IoT solutions by bundling IoT devices, secure connectivity, platform and data management. While some operators might lead in offering end-to-end IoT solutions for specific verticals e.g. connected cars or asset tracking, for some verticals operators will still depend on system integrators and other solution providers to help customers deploy the complete solution."