Top ten mobile operators control 76% of the cellular IoT market

IoT analyst firm Berg Insight has said in a new report that the ten largest global mobile operator groups have a combined market share of 76 per cent in cellular IoT.

The top players reported a combined active base of 407 million cellular IoT connections at the end of H1-2017. China Mobile was number one with 150 million IoT connections in the period. Vodafone ranked second, with a reported 59 million connections, ahead of China Unicom with 50 million IoT connections. AT&T and China Telecom ranked fourth and fifth with 36 million and 28 million IoT connections, respectively. Deutsche Telecom, Softbank/Sprint, Verizon and Telefónica, each have between 15 to 20 million cellular IoT subscribers, and their subscriber base is growing at yearly rates of 15–30 per cent. Telenor was the last player in the top ten with approximately 12 million cellular IoT subscribers.

“The Chinese mobile operators achieved tremendous volume growth in 2017, driven by accelerating uptake of cellular IoT in the domestic market,” said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst at Berg Insight and author of the report. “China Mobile is believed to have reached 200 million cellular IoT connections at the end of 2017.”