Narrowband IoT Market projected to reach USD 1.7 Billion by 2026
In this market, the region is considered one of the substantial contributors to the overall narrowband IoT market in Europe. Europe is considered one of the significant regions in terms of the narrowband IoT market, as it comprises some of the key industry players in the market. As these key players have participated in the early adoption of narrowband IoT technology, Europe stands at the forefront of the market.
The Asia Pacific region is expected to grow quickly in terms of the global narrowband IoT market as there is an increasing number of investments that are occurring regarding the development of smart cities.
Narrowband IoT Market Overview
The Narrowband Internet of Things, otherwise known as Narrowband IoT, is a low-power wide-area (LPWA) technology that was developed to enable a wide range of new IoT devices and services. Low power wide area (LPWA) technologies, in general, fill the gap between mobiles such as 3G and LTE and short-range wireless networks such as Bluetooth, WiFi, and ZigBee networks.
NB-IoT is designed for machine communications; its essential function is to provide connectivity for devices and applications that require low levels of data transfer and low mobility. It securely and reliably handles small amounts of fairly infrequent two-way data. Narrowband IoT considerably reduces user device power consumption compared to standard LTE; it enhances system capacity and spectrum efficiency.
The technology is well adapted for IoT applications and devices such as wearables, utilities, industrial solutions, and smart parking. Narrowband IoT has been designed to offer a high level of reliability and it allows the connection of a large number of devices simultaneously while maintaining power consumption.
Narrowband IoT is supported by all major mobile equipment, chip, and module manufacturers. It can co-exist with 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile networks and also profit from the security and privacy features of mobile networks, such as support for user identity confidentiality, entity authentication, confidentiality, data integrity, and mobile equipment identification.
The implementation of narrowband IoT offers various benefits, such as better power efficiency, cost savings, reliability, and wider deployment for IoT devices. Since technologies such as NB-IoT have a simpler waveform, they tend to consume less power. NB-IoT chips are also simpler to create and thus, cheaper.
Narrowband IoT implementation also leads to improved reliability for users as well as the guaranteed resource allocation needed for managed quality of service.
It can be seen that the degree of urbanization for every region is above 49% as of 2018, indicating the extent of urbanization that is occurring in regions worldwide. This increase in urbanization is pushing regions further toward technology and development in daily life- one example of this is smart cities. Narrowband IoT is expected to be largely employed in smart city applications. Some examples of these include waste management, parking solutions, streetlight monitoring, and smart metering.
Despite the competition of other Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking technologies, Narrowband IoT should quickly overtake them. Factors such as the reduced cost of the chips and superior performance should facilitate the Narrowband IoT takeover on “older” LPWA networking technologies in the near future.
It is estimated that by 2025, there will be over a billion LPWA connections, of which narrowband loT will make up over half. This can be said as the number of narrowband loT applications is emerging rapidly. The applications include solutions for healthcare, retail, logistics, smart buildings, and wearable devices. The technology is expected to increasingly compete with short-range wireless technologies such as Zigbee and Bluetooth.
Factors influencing the Narrowband loT market
There are several factors that are benefitting the growth of the narrowband IoT market. These factors include the accessibility to increased network coverage (the ability to obtain service in areas where signals are not conventionally available) and the growing emergence of smart cities and smart buildings.
A factor that is expected to restrain the growth of the overall narrowband loT market involves the lack of awareness of the system. This may lower the potential for the implementation of the technology, at least in the short term. Another factor is the uncertainty in the pricing model of the narrowband loT technology from the operators.
Some of the major players involved in the Global Narrowband loT Market are El Huawei Technologies co. ltd., Qualcomm Technologies, Inc, Ericsson Corporation, Vodafone Group Plc, Nokia Corporation, SEQUANS Communications SA, Quectel Wireless Solutions Co., Ltd, ZTE Corporation, Sierra Wireless, and Intel Corporation.