Berg Insight today released new findings about the market for IoT connectivity management platforms (CMPs), a standard component in the value proposition from mobile operators and IoT MVNOs around the world.
Market dynamics in the IoT CMP market have evolved in recent times as vendors focus on responding to the challenge of declining ARPUs for IoT connectivity services.
Early CMPs were developed at a time characterised by inflated expectations of the IoT market, which has led to incumbent vendors exiting the space, while others have had to rethink their product and pricing strategies, often involving tiered offerings and the addition of value-added services. New investments are targeted at RSP platform integrations, eSIM orchestration and connectivity management orchestration capabilities, machine learning-based analytics, security services and programmable network capabilities enabled by 5G SA.
Cisco is the largest IoT CMP provider globally. The company has a strong position in all major geographies and partnered with about 60 mobile operators worldwide at the end of 2024. The number of SIMs managed with Cisco IoT Control Center reached about 262 million. Aeris ranked as the second largest IoT CMP vendor with 28 mobile operator partners and 84 million connected devices at the end of 2024. The company took over the loss-making IoT business of Ericsson in early 2023 and has since the acquisition successfully managed to modernise and streamline operations, while merging its legacy platform and the IoT Accelerator into a single platform. MAVOCO has emerged as a significant player in recent years with more than 10 mobile operator partners at the year-end. MAVOCO’s IoT CMP is cloud- and core-agnostic, allowing mobile operators to utilise existing infrastructure to cost-effectively address IoT customers globally. Other IoT CMP vendors with a meaningful number of IoT CMP deployments are Comarch, Nokia, Vodafone. IoT CMPs are also a key component in the value proposition from vendors such as 1NCE, 1oT, emnify, Eseye and floLIVE, which operate as technology providers for mobile operators, as well as IoT MVNOs.
The fragmentation of the IoT CMP landscape has given rise to a new type of product category called connectivity management orchestration (CMO) platforms, which ride on top of IoT CMPs through API integrations, pioneered by vendors like IoTM Solutions and Simetric. Several IoT CMP vendors and IoT MVNOs have also introduced CMO capabilities. AT&T is an example of a mobile operator that has fully embraced the CMO concept and announced together with Simetric the introduction of the IoT Console Single Pane of Glass in November 2024. Enea is another example of a vendor that provides adjacent products. Its IoT CCS service works in concert with existing IoT CMPs and enables mobile operators to offer a multi-tenant, private APN service to their enterprise customers.
Berg Insight believes that a number of trends will positively influence the IoT CMP market in the coming years. Firstly, IoT CMPs and value-added services can play a key role in helping mobile operators drive revenue in the enterprise market from their 5G network infrastructure. Secondly, mobile operator groups’ increased consolidation of operations to key markets will lead to a growing number of independent mobile operators and thereby increasing the addressable market for third-party CMPs. Lastly, the new eSIM IoT specification, SGP.32, enables smaller mobile operators to utilise their existing SM-DP+ systems to offer eSIM services for the IoT market, though they will need to complement their offering with IoT CMPs. Until 2029, annual IoT CMP revenues are forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 12 percent from US$ 1.0 billion in 2024 to reach US$ 1.8 billion in 2029.
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