LPWA market to generate US$23bn in service revenue by 2020, says new research report
SNS Research has released a new 239-page report, The LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) Networks Ecosystem: 2017 – 2030 – Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, Industry Verticals & Forecasts.
LPWA networks are optimised to provide wide area coverage with minimal power consumption. Typically reliant on unlicensed frequencies, LPWA profile IoT devices have low data rates, long battery lives and can operate unattended for long periods of time. Licensed LPWA technologies such as NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1 are also beginning to gain traction.
Already prevalent in IoT applications such as smart metering, lighting control and parking management, LPWA networks are expected to make a significant contribution to the M2M and IoT ecosystem, with an estimated $23 billion in service revenue by 2020.
Among the questions answered are:
- How big is the LPWA networks opportunity?
- What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?
- How is the ecosystem evolving by segment and region?
- What will the market size be in 2020 and at what rate will it grow?
- Which regions and submarkets will see the highest percentage of growth?
- How are smart city initiatives driving LPWA network investments?
- What are the key performance characteristics of LPWA technologies such as Sigfox, LoRa, NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1 and EC-GSM-IoT?
- How does regulation impact the adoption of LPWA networks?
- Do cellular LPWA networks pose a threat to proprietary LPWA technologies?
- Who are the key market players and what are their strategies?
- What strategies should LPWA technology providers, mobile operators, MVNOs, aggregators, IoT platform providers and other ecosystem players adopt to remain competitive?
The report’s key findings include:
- Already prevalent in IoT applications such as smart metering, lighting control and parking management, LPWA networks are expected to make a significant contribution to the M2M and IoT ecosystem, with an estimated $23 Billion in service revenue by 2020.
- At present, a majority of LPWA networks are based on proprietary technologies and operate in license-exempt spectrum primarily in sub-GHz bands.
- With the recent completion of the NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1 and EC-GSM-IoT standards by the 3GPP, mobile operators are aggressively investing in software upgrades to build their own carrier-grade LPWA networks.
- By 2020, SNS Research estimates that more than 35% of all LPWA profile IoT devices will be served by NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1 and EC-GSM-IoT networks.
- As of Q4’2016, SNS Research estimates the cost of a typical LPWA module to be $4-18, depending on the specific technology. As LPWA network deployments mature, we expect that the cost per module can drop down to as low as $1-2 in volume quantities.
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