Huawei and Vodafone have topped the 2017 IoT (Internet of Things) Platforms Scorecard, excerpts of which were released today by business information provider IHS Markit.
The scorecard focuses primarily on IoT connectivity management platform (CMP) vendors, identifies vendors leading in that market and those best positioned to succeed long-term. Criteria include factors such as cumulative cellular IoT connections under management, support for multiple connectivity technologies, diversity of deployment models, and perceptions of vendors by a multi-country panel of enterprise end users.
The CMP segment of the IoT platforms market long has been a near duopoly formed by Cisco Jasper and Ericsson, the IHS Markit analysis notes.
However, the vendor landscape has shifted over the past 18 months, spurred by massive cellular IoT growth in China, a perception that additional costs remain to be driven out of CMP deployment, and increasing integration of CMPs with application-enablement platforms (AEPs) — a related IoT platform segment.
The 2017 scorecard ranks the top five vendors as Huawei, Vodafone, Cisco Jasper, Ericsson and HPE. Rounding out the top 10 were Aeris, Comarch, KORE, Stream Technologies and ZTE.
“Huawei and Vodafone ranked as this year’s scorecard leaders based on a number of factors,” says Sam Lucero, senior principal analyst for M2M and IoT at IHS Markit. “Huawei’s cumulative cellular IoT connection count exploded in 2016 on the back of its work with Chinese operators. Vodafone has quietly established a global footprint of operator partners that not only use its platform, but often its global network and global IoT SIM, as well.”
Both HPE and ZTE also performed particularly well in the scorecard.
“HPE introduced an innovative AEP in its Universal IoT Platform and, late in 2016, extended this with a CMP component,” Lucero says. “Likewise, ZTE benefitted from exceptional underlying Chinese market growth in addition to opening up new emerging markets in sub-Saharan Africa.”
