IoT Connectivity Management Platforms and eSIM Solutions 1st Edition

IoT Connectivity Management Platforms and eSIM Solutions 1st Edition

IoT Connectivity Management Platforms and eSIM Solutions is astrategy report from Berg Insight analysing the latest developmentson the IoT connectivity management platform and eSIM solutionmarkets. This strategic research report from Berg Insight providesyou with 100 pages of unique business intelligence including 5-yearindustry forecasts and expert commentary on which to base yourbusiness decisions.

IoT Connectivity Management Platforms and eSIM Solutions 1st Edition

Cellular IoT communications has special requirements that differ from consumercommunications services. In the mobile industry, there has been a gradual shift from the use ofgeneric networking platforms and SIM cards to purpose-built solutions for IoT. The cellular IoTcommunications space constitutes a highly complex environment with multiple layers ofinterconnected software systems. This report focuses on two key product categories thatfacilitate the delivery of cellular IoT communications services: IoT connectivity managementplatforms (CMPs) and eSIM management platforms.

IoT CMPs enable mobile operators to support their enterprise customers by providingfunctionality for provisioning, subscription management, cost monitoring and eventmanagement. About 12 percent of all IoT SIMs were deployed on third-party IoT CMPs at theend of 2024, while about 7 percent of the installed base was deployed by IoT MVNOs. The remainder was managed via mobile operators’ in-house developed CMPs. Excluding China, theshare of IoT SIMs managed via third-party CMPs was substantially higher, accounting for 31percent of all IoT SIMs. Annual revenues from the sales of third-party IoT CMPs grew 8 percentto reach an estimated US$ 1.0 billion in 2024. Until 2029, annual IoT CMP revenues areforecasted to grow at a CAGR of 12 percent to reach US$ 1.8 billion in 2029.

Market dynamics in the IoT CMP market have evolved in recent years as vendors focus onresponding to the challenge of declining ARPUs for IoT connectivity services. Early CMPs weredeveloped at a time characterised by inflated expectations of the IoT market, which has led toincumbent vendors exiting the space, while others have had to rethink their product and pricingstrategies, often involving tiered offerings and the addition of value-added services. Newinvestments are targeted at remote SIM provisioning (RSP) platform integrations, eSIMorchestration and connectivity management orchestration capabilities, machine learning-basedanalytics, security services and programmable network capabilities enabled by 5G SA.

Cisco is the largest IoT CMP provider globally. The company has a strong position in all majorgeographies and partnered with about 60 mobile operators worldwide at the end of 2024. Thenumber of SIMs managed with Cisco IoT Control Center reached about 262 million. Aeris rankedas the second largest IoT CMP vendor with 28 mobile operator partners and 84 million connecteddevices at the end of 2024. The company took over the loss-making IoT business of Ericsson inearly 2023 and has since the acquisition successfully managed to modernise and streamline operations, while merging its legacy platform and the IoT Accelerator into a single platform.MAVOCO has emerged as a significant player in recent years with more than 10 mobile operatorpartners at the year-end. MAVOCO’s IoT CMP is cloud- and core-agnostic, allowing mobileoperators to utilise existing infrastructure to cost-effectively address IoT customers globally.Other IoT CMP vendors with a meaningful number of IoT CMP deployments are Comarch, Nokiaand Vodafone. IoT CMPs are also a key component in the value proposition from vendors suchas 1NCE, 1oT, emnify, Eseye and floLIVE, which operate as technology providers for mobileoperators, as well as IoT MVNOs.

The fragmentation of the IoT CMP landscape has given rise to a new type of product categorycalled connectivity management orchestration (CMO) platforms, which ride on top of IoT CMPsthrough API integrations, pioneered by vendors like IoTM Solutions and Simetric. Several IoTCMP vendors and IoT MVNOs have also introduced CMO capabilities. AT&T is an example of amobile operators that have fully embraced the CMO concept and announced together withSimetric the introduction of the IoT Console Single Pane of Glass in November 2024. Enea isanother example of a vendor that provides adjacent products. Its IoT CCS service works inconcert with existing IoT CMPs and enables mobile operators to offer a multi-tenant, private APNservice to their enterprise customers.

Uptake in the IoT market has been slow compared to the adoption in the consumer market, assolutions based on the eSIM M2M specification, originally published in 2013, have not met theintended goals of enabling widescale adoption of remote SIM provisioning and eSIMs. After thepublication of the new eSIM IoT specification SGP.32 in 2023, eSIM solution providers are nowgearing up for a new adoption cycle of solutions based on the specification. New deploymentsbenefit from the large existing installed base of SM-DP+ systems, which will be used for bothconsumer and IoT eSIM services. The development of eSIM solutions for the IoT market hasbeen driven by both incumbent SIM providers such as Thales, Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) andIDEMIA, as well as newer entrants like Kigen. The shift to eSIM has attracted a large number ofother players into the space. With the transition to SGP.32, vendors like Redtea Mobile and MontyMobile which were previously mainly active in the consumer eSIM market have also started toaddress the IoT market. Berg Insight estimates that roughly 10 percent of the global installedbase of cellular IoT devices used an eSIM at the end of 2024.