Source: Thinkstock

Reposted from IoT Analytics

Disclaimer: This article does not provide guidance or intend to compare technical features of different IoT platforms. It looks at the market and compares platforms purely on a market meta level.

Key findings of the IoT Platform Comparison:

• IoT platforms remains a fragmented market with 450+ vendors
• Leading providers grow at 50%+
• Most platforms focus on industrial use cases (32%)
• M&A activity sharply increasing (17 deals last year)
• Startup funding remains insignificant compared to other industries ($330M in 2016)

In the recent update to our IoT Platform Company List for 2017, we compared more than 450 companies that have an IoT Platform in their offering. After including 260 IoT Platforms in our 2015 analysis and 360 in 2016 analysis, the 450 companies assessed in our latest research set a new record. This IoT Platform comparison looked at 5 types of different IoT platforms:

• IoT Application Enablement Platforms
• IoT Device Management Platforms
• IoT Cloud Storage Platforms (IaaS)
• IoT Analytics Platforms
• IoT Connectivity Backend (Platforms)

IoT Platform Comparison Insight 1: Market remains fragmented

Although some firms claim billion-dollar revenue streams through IoT, our IoT Platform Comparison continues to show that these claims are mostly pure marketing. In the last year, we followed-up at least two such claims with larger vendors and found that they claimed new “IoT” revenue that had actually been relabelled from previously existing revenue. Furthermore, the sales figures included expensive hardware equipment and only very little software revenue.

                               “Half of all IoT Platform companies made less than $1M in 2016”

We believe, only 7% of the 450 IoT Platform companies generated revenues in excess of $10M with their IoT Platforms in 2016. Furthermore, more than half of all companies made less than $1M, most of them smaller startups. The firms leading the pack are mainly made up of large cloud players, legacy device management and connectivity backend platforms as well as a handful of heavily backed Silicon Valley startups that are scaling faster than most of their counterparts around the world. Successful startup examples include predictive analytics firm Uptake and the open Smart Home Platform SmartThings, acquired by Samsung in 2014 and now acting as their subsidiary.
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Note: The IoT Platform Revenue was estimated based on various indicators and public announcements. It only includes software generated sales for real IoT deployments, including merely external solutions and not internal deployments e.g., on a company’s own equipment.

IoT Platform Comparison Insight 2: Leading providers are growing at 50%+
The consensus growth estimate for IoT markets, as provided by various analyst firms, lies between 25% and 40% annual growth for the next 5 years. Many of the IoT Platform Companies, however currently report numbers well above the forecast. A few smaller startups have stated that they are currently doubling revenue each year – but even leading providers recently reported growth rates above 50%. Three examples:

1. C3 IoT, valued at $1.4BN in March 2017, recently announced a revenue increase of 65% year-over-year and bookings that have grown by 600%. The company also claims to have 100M Sensors and devices under management – so far, the highest number publicly announced.
2. Cisco Jasper’s connectivity management platform “Control Center” has grown from 3,500 user companies in March 2016 to more than 9,000 in February 2017, thereby increasing the number of managed connected devices from 17M to 40M.
3. PTC increased its IoT revenue by 52% in 2016. Its core IoT offering is the application enablement Platform Thingworx, which it acquired in 2014.​

One note of caution: In our mind, these growth numbers are a reflection of the large amount of pilot projects and POCs happening in the market but do not (yet) indicate the long-awaited IoT breakthrough that would lift this market into the billions.

IoT Platform Comparison Insight 3: One third of platforms cater to the Industrial / manufacturing segment

There are generally more IoT Platform Companies focusing on Business/Enterprise IoT than Consumer IoT. The most popular segment for IoT Platforms lies in manufacturing and industrial solutions. 32% of the IoT Platform Companies offer solutions for this market including industrial automation firms like Siemens, ABB, Schneider or Bosch but also software vendors like IBM, PTC or Microsoft. Typical supported use cases include production performance management, manufacturing analytics, predictive maintenance and remote service.
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The IoT Platform Comparison reveals that the other large segments are Smart Cities (22%), Smart Home (21%) and Energy (21%). Customer Health is the least popular segment for IoT Platforms, with only 5% of all IoT Platforms offering solutions. These results concur with our analysis of the top IoT application areas, in which the 4 leading segments were Connected Industry, Smart City, Smart Energy and Connected Car.

IoT Platform Comparison Insight 4: Increasing M&A activity – 17 deals last year

According to our analysis, the number of new IoT Platform startups reached its peak in 2013, with numbers going down ever since. Startups coming to market in 2016 have a different focus than those that started in 2013 or earlier: Back then many of the startups had a horizontal, cross-industry approach to IoT while nowadays there seems to be a higher numbers of niche IoT Platforms that are specialized by vertical, technology or use case. Examples are: Axonize, an IoT platform for System Integrators or Tachyus, an IoT Platform for the Oil & Gas Industry.

Meanwhile the number of acquisitions in the IoT Platform market is on the rise. 2016 was the first year in which the number of newly acquired companies (17) rose higher than the number of startups we identified (13)*. The deal value of the 6 acquisitions that disclosed the purchasing price lies around $11B.

Most of the acquisitions are performed by tech firms that play in the vicinity of IoT but lack IoT platform capabilities. The acquisition of Cumulocity by Software AG earlier in 2017 is a good example for an analytics and enterprise software focused company completing their offering by acquiring a  pure-play IoT Platform vendor.

Our IoT Platform Comparison shows that there are a total of 31 IoT Platform companies, which have been acquired and whose platform is still available today, operating under the original name. Furthermore, there are 21 companies whose platform is no longer available after having been acquired. All acquisitions can be found in a separate tab in our 2017 IoT Platforms Database.
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*Note: Many startups only become visible after a few years

IoT Platform Comparison Insight 5: Startup investment remains comparably insignificant

Funding for IoT Platform startups has risen sharply between 2011 and 2016.
                             
“IoT Platform funding is insignificant. Ride sharing platform Uber received 14x more funding in 2016 than all IoT Platforms combined”

However, IoT Platform funding is insignificant compared to mature tech topics. Just consider that in 2016, ride sharing platform Uber received 14x more funding than all IoT platforms combined in the same year ($4.9B vs. $338M). Half of the IoT Platform funding issued in 2017 so far went to two companies (Actility and Uptake). Neither of them are pure-play IoT Platform firms. Actility, a LPWA solution provider that runs the Thingpark platform which caters mostly to Lora deployments, received funding of $50M in April 2017. Cisco investments is one of the named investors.

Uptake, an analytics platform which was founded in 2014, achieved the impressive funding round of $90M in Series B.
Notable investors in the IoT Platform space besides Cisco Investments (e.g., invested in Actility, Ayla Networks, EVRYTHNG, Relayr, Sensity Systems) include Intel Capital, GE Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB).

For more information or to get access to the full report, please visit our STORE.

This morning, a final ruling took place on the Reyes v. Lincoln Automotive Financial Services case from the Second Circuit. Essentially consumers who have previously opted in to receiving calls from retailers, financial institutions, banks, hospitals and others do not have the right to revoke that opt-in, ouch!

Eric Troutman is a partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whitney had a few comments regarding this late-breaking decision. "The Second Circuit Court of Appeal held today that contractual consent provisions found in consumer contracts cannot be revoked. This means that once consumers agree to receive phone calls from retailers, banks and finance companies via their acceptance of a consumer contract they cannot stop automated calls," Troutman says. "Most consumer contracts already include those provisions because the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) requires express consent before a cell phone can be called with automated technology," Troutman says. 
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 "So called “revocation” TCPA lawsuits have been very popular with the Plaintiff’s bar. In those suits a consumer sues a caller claiming that he or she had asked the calls to stop but they continued. Now that the Second Circuit Court of Appeal has found that contractual consent provisions cannot be revoked, more banks, retailers, hospitals, and even social media companies will use these provisions to assure that they can timely contact their customers on their cell phone using automated technologies. The consumer will not be able to avoid those calls by simply asking for the calls to stop, as had previously been the case.," Troutman says. 

Q1 2017 and End of Year Assessment of the “Top 4 Mobile Carriers”
Who is winning and starting the year off right?
It is a busy time of year and we are still playing catch up, so we apologize for the delay in getting this update out. Compass Intelligence just completed the final assessment of Q1 2017 and the evaluation and comparisons to previous quarters in 2016 in terms of improvements and declines. We do this each quarter to understand the subscriber and share changes, as well as evaluate the key trends taking place in the wireless industry for both consumer and B2B.  We have been tracking the quarterly metrics since 2007. Some metrics are our own internal modeling and estimates, as the market does not report in all categories.  A few highlights from Q1 include:

• Both Sprint and T-Mobile scored a 6 out of 10 improvement in key metrics, with both seeing positive net adds in both total connections and retail subscribers from Q4 2016 to Q1 2017
• T-Mobile again dominated with total subscriber additions of 1.3M
• Verizon had a net positive of 117K connections in Q1, while AT&T lost 666K in total connections overall
• AT&T continues to lead in total Connected Devices (IoT and M2M) in the U.S. with 32.4M

A snapshot of Q1 2017 is below. Compass Intelligence compared last quarter’s results to this quarter to show which metrics showed improvement over others (denoted by + or -). 

​Below are additional thoughts and insights based on the quarter and annual performance:

• Summary:
  • The industry added 777K total connections (includes IoT and mobile subscribers),  in Q1, with an addition of 906K retail subscriber additions (half of what was added in Q4)
  • Compared to Q1 2016, Q1 2017 only added about 10%  and 33% of total connections and subscribers, representing a huge drop off to what was happening a year ago
  • Total Connections reached 407.2M by the big 4
  • Retail Subscribers for the Top 4 carriers reached 304.2M
  • A total of 1.3M tablets were activated in Q1), with Verizon adding an overall 507K just in Q4 2016 alone.
  • Based on total connections alone, AT&T and Sprint lost total market share while Verizon maintained and T-Mobile gained.
  • AT&T added 809K connected devices in Q1, reaching 32.4M total connections in Q1

 

• REVENUE: Similar to last quarter, All carriers reported lower service revenue QoQ except for T-Mobile. (this has been a continuing theme)
  • T-Mobile increased revenue in Q1 2017 by $84M compared to Q4 2017.
  • Combined the industry experienced a loss of $862M in service revenue compared to Q4 2016
• POSTPAID ADDS:
  • All carriers ended the quarter with negative QoQ postpaid adds, except for T-Mobile
  • T-Mobile dominated with postpaid adds, adding 914K postpaid net adds in Q1
• CONNECTIONS:
  • Total industry connections reached 407.2M at the end of Q1 2017 for the top 4 carriers
  • Total industry subscriber base: 419.0M (Includes ALL MNOs and MVNOs)
  • Total smartphone subscribers=323.9M  
  • Total Connected Devices reached 69.1M for the industry.

As a summary, this has been a fairly poor performing quarter with the exception of T-Mobile. Now the B2B market looks completely different (contact CompassIntel.com to see what is happening in U.S. B2B). The biggest indicator is the overall drop in operating sales revenue, and watching this continue. The top 4 carriers each quarter as a whole continue to see decline in overall sales revenue, with this quarter totaling a combined $43.4B. Verizon launched “unlimited” in February, so Q2 might be interesting to see how the market responds.

The first quarter has ended, but your company has yet to get its arms around how to leverage technology to compete, remain in business and improve the customer experience. Let's explore some key recommendations that all businesses should be considering as they embark on the ever-changing business technology landscape.
Here are five ways to kick-start your thinking, along with recommendations to help you automate your company operations and workforce.
1. Technology planningTechnology plans should focus on at least these three core areas: customers, workforce and operations.
Customers always come first and, of course, some technology areas will definitely overlap (i.e. operations and customers). While you are preparing or evaluating your core technology or IT budget, you must lead with the "why" and the "who" first, making sure you are covering all of your technology bases.
Customer technology may include online and in-store systems, through partners and third parties, and through distributors or wholesale. Each technology path through these channels must be explored in depth: What is working? What isn't? What can be automated? What can be improved? And how does this impact the customer experience (CX)?

To read the rest of this article on CIO.com, please CLICK HERE

Below is a quick summary of deals available for customers by the carriers. Highlights of the new S8 include the new Infinity screen, the DeX dock that mirrors your smartphone onto a desktop (think desktop replacement with smartphone, connects to keyboard, display and mouse), Siri like application called Bixby, 5.8 and 6.2 inch models available, 12 megapixel back camera, back fingerprint reader, removal of home button, iris recognition, face recognition (face reader to open device by looking at it), Harman Kardon speakers, dual bluetooth audio, and much more.    

AT&T

• Up to $750 in credits towards another Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+
• A Samsung Gear VR included, along with a controller powered by Oculus and an Oculus content bundle
• A Samsung Gear S3 for only $49 with a 2-year service agreement
• For only 99-cents, customers can get a Samsung Tab E and/or a Samsung Gear S2 when activating 2-year service agreements

 
T-Mobile:

• $30 down payment and cost $30/month for 24 months on the T-Mobile Equipment Installment Plan (FRP: $750). JUMP! On Demand customers can snag the device for $0 down and just $33/month.
• 130 down and $30/month for 24 months on EIP (FRP: $850), with the same down payment and monthly payment amount for JUMP! On Demand customers. 

 
MetroPCS:

• MetroPCS customers can also get in on the action – the Galaxy S8 will be available starting April 21 for $729.

 
Sprint

• Lease: $31.25 per month for 18 months or lease Samsung Galaxy S8+ for $35.42 per month for 18 months
• Pre-order Samsung Galaxy S8, upgrade any time after 12 lease payments to the latest Galaxy smartphone
• Get a FREE Gear VR bundle (valued at $179): includes a Gear VR with Controller, Oculus Bonus Content and Samsung Rewards Experience.
• Or, choose an Immersive Gear VR Experience bundle for $99 that comes with premium headphones and 256GB memory card
  

        *available from Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA on April 21 **Launched Samsung Sweepstakes contest as well

A few weeks back, we discussed where we are today with the two waves of "The Connected Vehicle." 1st we focused on bringing WiFi and 4G/LTE to the vehicle. Now let's jump into the power of the Autonomous Vehicle, the 2nd wave.

According to Techopedia, the definition of Autonomous Vehicles is, "An autonomous car is a vehicle that can guide itself without human conduction. This kind of vehicle has become a concrete reality and may pave the way for future systems where computers take over the art of driving. An autonomous car is also known as a driverless car, robot car, self-driving car or autonomous vehicle."

For many out there, these concepts are so far out there that is is challenging to understand what this means to both us as consumers, as well as industry and businesses. Let's call the market AV for short, since we will be discussing scenarios throughout this blog. The AV market has the chance to disrupt industries in the transportation marketplace, as well as disrupt the way goods and services get transported and delivered throughout the world. Before we get too technical, lets focus on what this really means to us as consumers, consumers who drive our vehicles every day to work, school, leisure places, and events.

Below are some real-world scenarios on how AV will impact the consumer, imagine this...

• Scheduling your planned driving at the beginning of the week (work, taking kids to school, taking kids to sports activities, medical appointments, etc.) - knowing your fuel and mileage up front
• Riding alongside your kids on the way to school, working on homework, reviewing projects and activities for the day, and getting one-on-one time with your children and even spouse (if you carpool)
• Becoming productive in vehicles for work, watching the news while drinking your coffee, listening to a podcast or work-related video, getting an early start to your day with work calls or phone meetings or even video conference calls
• Feeling safe and secure, knowing the traffic ahead is something your vehicle is already aware of and is rerouting your normal commute to the school and office in a more efficient and safe route
• Listening to your vehicle provide you options to the closest donut or coffee shop, and verbally telling your vehicle your choice, your vehicle then drives you to that location (Imaging Alexa and Siri combined with your car)
• On a long road trip, your car knows the weather and road conditions on your route, and makes intelligent decisions to route your trip for the optimum safety and safest roads
• Your college kid, after a night on the town (think party and alcohol), is safety driven to his or her home and you can visibly see that he/she safely arrived to his/her college dorm through an alert

These are just basic scenarios, but the power of convenience and time is what AV will do for you as a consumer. Now let's explore business or industry impacts. Imagine this...

• Shipping, logistics, and transport becomes fully automated through scheduling, loading, and delivery
• The common man-made errors, mistakes, and risks go away...think driver fatigue, under the influence drivers, texting and driving drivers
• Smart routing is the norm, meaning your goods and services being delivered are routed as smart as can be around traffic and around bad weather
• Your crew of delivery drivers now have time for other important tasks like business meetings, logistics management, data entry or scanning, and much more
• Taxis, Uber-like Services, and ride-share have whole new meaning and the power of concierge and personal services are now even more enhanced because drivers are not "stuck" to the wheel (Think luxury and spa like services for business travelers)
• Commuter services transition as well, commuter-based AV become the norm and again personal and luxe services provide for convenience, personal touch, and catering to the customer

Again, for the business world this definitely changes the way we look at delivery, transportation, and logistics, but it also throws a wrench into traditional commuter and transport services. The industry needs to look at this from an opportunity stand-point and not focus on businesses, jobs, and services that become obsolete. Personal and customized services become the huge opportunity here. What are your thoughts? How could this impact your business or your personal life?

Recent Related News on AV:

• Navigating the Future of Electric and Autonomous Vehicles
• General Motors turns its back on long history in Europe
  
• AAA survey shows most people fearful of autonomous vehicles
• ​Toyota unveils its new crazy-looking autonomous vehicle platform
• Autonomous vehicle bill advances in House Committee

For further reading, please check out the related blog regarding the 1st wave of The Connected Vehicle.
For more information, please visit our RESEARCH page to explore other technologies and market indicators.

Written by Stephanie Atkinson, CEO of Compass Intelligence, LLC

Q4 2016 and End of Year Assessment of the “Top 4 Mobile Carriers”
T-Mobile attracts the most customers in 2016 while Verizon excelled in retail churn

All four carriers have finished up their earnings calls, and Compass Intelligence just completed the final assessment of Q4 2016 and the entire 2016 year, and also evaluated the comparisons to previous quarters and 2015/2016 in terms of improvements and declines. We do this each quarter to understand the subscriber and share changes, as well as evaluate the key trends taking place in the wireless industry for both consumer and B2B.  We have been tracking the quarterly metrics since 2007. Some metrics are our own internal modeling and estimates, as the market does not report in all categories.  A snapshot of Q4 2016 is below.
​
Compass Intelligence compared last quarter’s results to this quarter to show which metrics showed improvement over others (denoted by + or -).

Below are additional thoughts and insights based on the quarter and annual performance:

• Summary:
  • Q1 2016 experienced the most additions of connections for 2016, while Q4 (a quarter that usually experiences decent growth due to holiday sales) added the fewest total connections compared to all 4 quarters
  • Q4 2016 quarter with about 4M new connections QoQ (includes IoT and mobile subscribers), which is about 1.2M less than what was added in Q3 2016.
  • Retail Subscribers for the Top 4 carriers reached 303.3M, or an addition of 7.7M added for the whole year
  • While Verizon maintained the lowest churn for the year at an average of .985%, AT&T followed with an average churn for 2016 at 1.08%
  • A total of 5.3M tablets were activated for the entire year (2016), with Verizon adding an overall 507K just in Q4 2016 alone.
  • Based on total connections alone, all top 4 carriers except for T-Mobile lost market share. Verizon lost almost 1% market share, while T-Mobile gained over 1% share.
  • AT&T leveraged its growth in IoT connections in 2016, and remained the market leader in IoT.

 

• REVENUE: Similar to last quarter, All carriers reported lower service revenue QoQ except for T-Mobile.
  • T-Mobile increased revenue in Q4 2016 by $122M compared to Q3 2016.
  • Combined the industry experienced a total of $546M in overall wireless service revenue in 2016
  • Total Q4 2016 mobile service revenue reached $44.3M, compared to $44.8M in Q3 2016
• POSTPAID ADDS:
  • All 4 carriers ended the quarter with positive postpaid net adds, adding 2.6M retail subscribers for the quarter
  • T-Mobile dominated with postpaid adds, being the only carrier to add more than 1M postpaid adds this quarter and in Q3, this quarter they added 1.2M postpaid subscribers
  • Verizon added 576K postpaid subscribers in Q4 2016, which is an improvement from Q3 2016
• CONNECTIONS:
  • Total industry connections reached 406.4M at the end of Q4 2016 for the top 4 carriers
  • Total industry subscriber base: 418.5M (Includes ALL MNOs and MVNOs)
  • Total smartphone subscribers=313.5M  
  • Total Connected Devices reached 67.8M for the industry.

As shown above, overall the industry added an estimated 21.5M connections in 2016 compared to 24M connections in 2015, which represents a 5.3% change from 2015. While Verizon ended the year with the most connections at 140.6M connections, T-Mobile lead overall connection adds for the year, adding over 10.2M connections in 2016 where in 2015 AT&T was the leader in overall connection additions. AT&T’s growth was primarily driven by IoT connections, adding an estimated 5.4M connected device connections in 2016. In terms of retail subscribers, the industry growth for the year reached 2.5% adding 7.7M subscribers. For retail subscribers, T-Mobile was the strongest performer adding 4.9M retail subscribers in 2016, followed by AT&T with 2.7M retail subscriber additions in 2016. 

​To get access to this data in-depth and quarterly, please visit our Quarterly Tracker page for more information.

There will be two huge waves of innovation in the automotive market driven by innovation, connectivity advancements, machine learning, applications (infotainment, diagnostics, and personal experiences), and machine intelligence. The first wave, which is what we are experiencing now but are just breaking the ice is  "The Connected Vehicle" wave. Imagine a vehicle that ...

• Automatically starts for you not just by your smartphone but a schedule you set up for the week
• A heating/AC unit in your vehicle that senses the existing climate and weather conditions and auto-adjusts to 72 degrees wherever you are and by knowing your route
• Using voice automation reads you the weather, recites your audio book where you left off the night before, plays your favorite news or music
• Schedules your Discount Tire appointment automatically (because your tire tread is getting low) with your calendar on your phone and asks for confirmation
• Streams TV and movies by voice request you already pay for at your home (cable/SAT TV), but sends them to the 2nd row headrests and/or tablets your kids are using
• Reviews current and ongoing traffic conditions and auto-routes and suggests changes to your drive into the office
• Using Amazon Echo/Alexa, Google Home, Siri, Cortana, etc you are able to search for favorite restaurants and community information as you are driving, in a safe and secure manner
• Before entering into a busy parking lot, your vehicle is routed to the parking spot that is available instead of you driving all around to find parking
• Autopay for gas as you drive up to the gas station and sensors can detect the amount of fuel you get, and autocharge you
• Biometrics or a quick scan of your eye (iris) confirms you are approved to drive the vehicle you are in, keeping those pesky teenage children of yours to not take the car out for a late night spin
• With a click of a button, you are able to schedule auto detailing and car wash services while you are at a hair appointment (Services on demand, where you are)
• The camera system all around your vehicle documents your travels, incidents, and helps you lower your insurance rates
• Your vehicle begins to learn your favorite places, activities, entertainment, and routes and helps you make better decisions and recommendations based on that

The vehicles we are driving now (most of them) do not have LTE or WiFi, but many of those driving off of the car lots today will and that opens up the door for endless possibilities. Yes, the handheld devices we use today will be an interface to the vehicle and the applications, but the car will be a connected device as well. The vehicle will also be a hub of applications for work, home, life, and play. Developers have open doors to create and generate experiences that allow for personalized services, intuitive experiences, and intelligent vehicles. Bringing together technology and our busy lives is what makes this wave so exciting. We all lead such busy lives, and activities to enhance and improve our day-to-day (and even our security and safety), especially our long commutes, car pools, and the way we do life is what technology is all about.

Some of the biggest names are playing in this market...connected vehicle, connected cars, smart cars, automated vehicles, etc. Amazon, AT&T, Blackberry, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sierra Wireless just to name a few are major players in this industry, along with every major automotive manufacturer. 

Recent and related news for further reading:

• Tata Motors, Microsoft ink deal for connected cars
• Four ways the connected car will change banking
• Uber, Intel and IoT firms join coalition to secure connected cars
• NHTSA proposed rule aims to accelerate connected vehicle tech

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Next week we will talk about the second wave, autonomous vehicles. Stay tuned...
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Make sure to check out my earlier post, “Preparing Your Enterprise for IoT and Automation in the Workplace: Part 1,” before reading this column.
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In Part 1, we discussed top key happenings, findings and wisdom that might help your business engage in better discussions as you plan for 2017. This is specific to automation of operations and the workforce, connecting your workplace, and implementing internet of things (IoT) applications. We have already explored the first three bullets below, so now let’s explore the last four. read more by going to CIO.com