Industry Expert Blogs

Cellular as a method to communicate with the IoT is on a tear for obvious reasons. It’s long-range with no concerns about the lesser reach of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, it needs no added infrastructure since it already works with 2G/3G/4G (and ultimately 5G I presume) and it’s designed for ultra-low power, supporting those devices expecting to run on a coin-cell battery for 10 years. Commercial cellular IoT networks are blossoming across the world, with a total of 69 launches by 33 operators in 34 counties as of Q4, 2018; and NB-IoT represents 80% of all deployments.

For the big cellular players with in-house communications design expertise this is just another direction to grow. But this is IoT, with lots of new silicon design teams, so the market is likely to be more fragmented than more familiar mobile markets. Many of these players, not all new ventures, lack silicon communications expertise so depend on proven IP to handle the modem.

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