LoRaWAN, Sigfox, Weightless, RPMA, NB-IoT, etc… There are many LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Networks) solutions, but it’s unclear whether most/all will survive and coexist, or there will eventually be a couple of winners used by everyone.
VDC Research is claiming that so far, LoRaWan assumes LPWAN leadership for IoT gateways, explaining that “LoRaWAN (LoRa) has generated considerable traction with new product launches from a number of gateway suppliers through the past 18 months”, but points to mounting competition from 3GPP standards such as NB-IoT and LTE Cat M1.
Sadly, the company did not provides number in their public announcement, and those are only available in the paid report. VDC Research still released a public executive brief (free registration required), with some of the highlights including:
- The global market for IoT gateway hardware is forecasted to grow to more than $2.5B in 2021.
- While intelligent gateways generated more market revenue than M2M gateways in 2016, they will not comprise the majority of unit shipments until 2019.
- Shipments of IoT gateway devices supporting LPWANs is set to explode with a 2016-2021 CAGR in excess of 100%.
- The fastest growing Linux distributions for IoT gateways include OpenWRT, Ubuntu, and Wind River Linux.
- Arm and x86 will extend their majority share among embedded CPU architectures in gateway hardware.
- Nearly half of IoT gateway revenue will be generated in the Americas in 2021.
- Two-thirds of current IoT gateway projects from VDC’s annual embedded engineer survey are connecting to sensors deployed in the field; sensor networks are driving gateway deployments.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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