New market dynamic brewing as Sierra Wireless leads M2M module revenues but SIMCom Wireless leads in shipments

In the latest update to ABI Research’s cellular module vendor market shares report, Sierra Wireless maintained its number one position for cellular module revenues in 2015. This marks the fifth year in a row that the company received this ranking, exceeding its next closest competitor by nearly $175 million. But there is a new leader in cellular module shipments, SIMCom Wireless.

“Through aggressive pricing, strength in its China home market, and some large deals for its original design manufacturer business, which makes specialized M2M devices, SIMCom easily moved into the number one spot for 2015 module shipments,” says Dan Shey, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research.

SIMCom’s M2M module financial results and product roadmap, as well the module results and roadmaps of competitors ZTE and Neoway, suggest that future shipment leaders will be those who can compete on price. This is because the module technologies that will dominate growth over the next five years are from the latest 3GPP standards for LTE: Cat 1, Cat M1, and Cat M2.

“The newest members of the LTE family are designed to be less complex to limit power consumption and, as importantly, less expensive,” concludes Shey. “Effectively, these modules are intended to be commodity products, to drive up cellular adoption and expand module use into new markets. But this technology shift is forcing module vendors to rethink their overall IoT strategies—for some vendors, they simply will not try to compete on price.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s M2M Cellular Module Vendor Market Share. This report is part of the company’s IoT, IoE, & M2M sector, which includes research reports, market data, insights, and competitive assessments.