• CMP market dynamics is changing as new players emerge, but concerns persist on coopting with competitors.
• The Chinese business model on IoT connectivity is different from the rest of the world and driven by significantly lower realization per IoT connection.
• Rankings cover 27 CMP players across white-label, captive and third-party players.

Cisco, Telefonica and Vodafone have emerged as ‘Pace-setters’ in the Global IoT Connectivity Management Platform (CMP) Rankings, according to the 2023 edition of Counterpoint Research’s CMP CORE (COmpetitive, Ranking, and Evaluation) report.

Commenting on the IoT CMP rankings and the competitive landscape, Associate Director Mohit Agrawal highlighted, “Connectivity is at the heart of IoT implementations, and connectivity management platforms have an important role to play. The CMP space has been under the spotlight since Aeris acquired the Ericsson IoT Accelerator in March. The emergence of dynamic, cloud-centric players like Eseye, Soracom, floLIVE and Emnify is providing serious alternatives to existing platforms for connectivity providers but concerns on using a platform from another connectivity provider persists.”

Agrawal added, “China, the world’s largest IoT market, is dominated by Huawei and Whale Cloud but both the players have limited presence outside of China. China’s IoT connectivity market continues to follow high growth at sub-$2 revenue per connection per year impacting the business model of CMP players.”

Commenting on the research findings, Senior Research Analyst Akshara Bassi said, “Cisco has a significant lead over its competitors in terms of platform capability as well as execution capability. Vodafone and Telefonica joined Cisco in the Pace-setter category of rankings, showcasing the strong in-house capabilities of these leading mobile operators. The Pace-setters have industry-leading features across all the measured parameters and can execute well in the market. Cisco leads in provisioning, orchestration, analytics, product maturity and integration with OSS/BSS while Telefonica leads in cloud integrations and ease of use. Vodafone excels in security and billing.”

Aeris, Verizon, Cubic Telecom, Whale Cloud, Wireless Logic, Kore Wireless, Emnify, Soracom and Velos have emerged as Leaders in the CMP market. These players have swiftly added features to their platforms to address new use cases, especially from Mobility. Cubic does well in analytics, particularly for the automotive industry.

floLIVE, BICS, Eseye, Onomondo, Mavoco and Pod Group have emerged as Challengers with very capable platforms but still do not have the required market presence. Bassi added, “Over time, these particular vendors are most likely to move up to the Leaders quadrant”.

Comarch, Huawei, 1NCE, Nokia and NTT Transatel are Up-starters with significant execution capabilities, but the platform lacks a few key features compared to the Leaders. Comarch and Nokia do well on integration with OSS and BSS while Huawei is the largest CMP in terms of managed connections as it powers China Mobile. 1NCE may not have some of the features compared to other CMPs but has a disruptive business model and hence its CMP does not fit the traditional feature sets.

IOTM, ConnectedYou, Pelion and 1oT round up the rankings as they find themselves in the Niche segment. Agrawal clarified, “There has been an emergence of platform aggregators, such as IOTM and ConnectedYou, focusing on ‘Bring Your Own Contract’. Platforms from these players have a different role compared to those of traditional CMPs and hence their features are not directly comparable with other CMP vendors. These players provide a single pane of glass and superior analytics, but their USP is under threat as leading CMP players are adding these functionalities to their platforms.”