According to ABI Research, Internet of Things (IoT) gateway shipments are on the rise. The research house forecasts IoT gateway shipments to grow to exceed 64 million units in 2021. While smart home automation and security market components are expected to account for more than 50% of all IoT gateway shipments over the next five years, the mobility and transportation segments, as well as industrial and infrastructure, are expected to generate the most revenue.
"The home automation and security market relies on gateways for aggregating and orchestrating communications between an increasing variety of home sensors and cloud services," said Dan Shey, managing director and vice president at ABI. "However, this segment will only represent around 30% of the market's five-year value. This is because gateways in the home do not have the same requirements for ruggedness, antenna design, and processor requirements as gateways used in industrial and commercial settings."
ABI says the mobility, transportation, and industrial and infrastructure sectors are higher priced than the home market, albeit lower volume. IoT gateway opportunities in fleet management are small, but growing. Companies such as Omnitracs, PeopleNet, and Sierra Wireless and are offering gateways for multi-application communications in fleet vehicles, such as critical event reporting, fault monitoring, and navigation. The industrial and infrastructure market segment, meanwhile, relies on many traditional markets like smart grid and video surveillance. Looking ahead, this segment is expected to benefit from new higher growth markets through applications in the smart cities and manufacturing/process industries.
"There are many traditional names that have been serving the M2M/IoT gateway market for years, such as CalAmp, Cisco, Cradlepoint, Digi International, Eurotech, and Sierra Wireless," said Shey. "But these big-name players are just a small share of the total supplier base, which includes both branded and white label vendors. In this growing IoT market, consolidation is not expected anytime soon, and suppliers are increasingly turning to software and services to differentiate."