Has IoT Connectivity Market Begun to Winnow?

Not every proposed new communications service succeeds. Not every platform does either. As there are so many IoT connectivity, platforms, and low revenues for service providers, a winnowing of platforms seems inevitable.

Among the many IoT connectivity choices, perhaps the easiest business case can be made for local access platforms using unlicensed spectrum. When that is possible, app and device suppliers will prefer it, as it adds little recurring cost. Conversely, the "connectivity for a fee" opportunity is reduced.

Beyond that, however, the number of "forr fee" platforms seems destined to shrink, as the revenue opportunity probably cannot support all of them at scale.

source: Advantech 

So winnowing will happen over time, as use cases and appropriate connectivity modes become generally accepted. In the case of mobile networks, there will also be attrition as legacy networks are shut down, 2G and 3G being the obvious examples.

Another case in point is the Sigfox bankruptcy, which largely relegates that option to niches, assuming sustainability is possible.

Now Bouygues Telecom says it will abandon LoRaWAN in favor of mobile network access. That does not end prospects for LoRaWAN, but weakens its case for mainstream deployment. 

Over time, mobile network platforms will narrow as well, with less use of 3G. It remains to be seen how much usage broadband (4G and 5G connections) gets, compared to the narrower-band and specialized NB-IoT and LTE-M platforms. 

source: Ericsson 

Many believe NB-IoT already is failing to get traction, even as adoption hopes remain high. .

source: Strategy Analytics 

Decisions will also be spurred if connectivity revenues are smallish.  Most observers expect the great majority of IoT connections will use local access connections of various types, and will not be using a wide area network service such as the mobile network or a low-power wide area network. 

So the issue remains: how big a market will WAN service connections represent? And, if the market is significant, how significant will it be, compared to other opportunities service providers may have? 

source: IoT Analytics 

At the moment service providers might be earning monthly revenues between $0.50 and $1.00 a month. But some believe IoT per-connection prices could fall to as little as $1 per year. How many service providers could make a business case for such a service?