SigFox lost ground to LoRa in 2017, says IHS Markit
However, for in the market for LPWA in unlicensed spectrum, the LoRaWAN protocol achieved higher-than-expected growth during 2017 while the outlook for rival network supplier SigFox has darkened, IHS Markit asserts. The LoRaWAN protocol is maintained by the LoRa Alliance and IHS Markit projects that LoRaWAN public connections — those offered for service by LoRaWAN network operators — will rise to nearly 300 million by 2021.
Of SigFox SA and its proprietary LoRa scheme, Lee Ratliff, analyst for IoT connectivity at IHS Markit said in a statement: “As a venture-funded startup, Sigfox has always represented an element of risk for partners and customers seeking to deploy IoT applications. Underscoring that risk are the company’s unclear funding situation and attrition among top executives, which hint at turmoil within the otherwise opaque private company.”
Ratliff added: “The events of 2017 have widened LoRa’s lead over Sigfox at a time when seizing market share is critical to ensuring survival as NB-IoT [narrowband IoT] begins to be deployed at scale. While LoRa and Sigfox are technically similar, the business models are clearly differentiated and lower risk has become a key advantage in LoRa’s favor.”
Globally IHS Markit anticipates the number of LPWA connections of all types is going to reach 1 billion by 2021.
Next: Chinese boost for NB-IoT
Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) received a boost in June 2017 when the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued an NB-IoT policy framework. That framework requires deployment of 400,000 NB-IoT sites in 2017 and of 1.5 million sites by 2020; and 20 million connections by the end of 2017 and 600 million connections by the end of 2020.
“The cellular IoT market was already booming in China, with the three main Chinese operators growing cellular IoT connections from 53.5 million in 2014 to 160.2 million in 2016,” said Sam Lucero, analyst for IoT at IHS Markit, in the same statement. “With the demonstrated desire by the central government for rapid NB-IoT deployment in the country, along with the key benefits NB-IoT offers for many IoT use cases, it now seems likely that worldwide NB-IoT connections could reach nearly 450 million by 2021, even when conservatively assuming that the Chinese operators do not achieve the aggressive government target for 2020.”
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