The Mobile World Congress returns after its Americas debut in 2017 and is pulling out all the stops once again. It promises to be huge, with leading players from across the whole mobile ecosystem showcasing the latest in mobile products, technologies and services to over 25,000 professionals and 1,000 companies.
The congress will explore an array of themes, but the one I am particularly excited about is the IoT programme featuring talks about the role of IoT in 5G, IoT security, as well as exhibitions and showcases of the latest innovations in cellular IoT. ‘Excited’ is an understatement. Like a kid in a candy shop I want to see everything, from talks on connected honeybees and connected vehicles, to the life hack showing how easily devices can be compromised if not secured properly. Between all this, I would also like to find time to visit the IoT 101 panel programme which will cover various aspects of IoT, from adoption challenges to security.
Clearly I’m not alone in my interest. The event is hugely popular with companies from many industries exploring how cellular IoT can be used across diverse, real-world applications for consumers and enterprises, including health and wellness, fleet management, autonomous vehicle experiences and more. This reflects the steady growth of cellular IoT, with companies from every type of industry now looking at IoT as a way of accelerating technological development and generating maximum value.
The trend is only going to grow in the coming years with tens of billions of endpoints anticipated to be connected by the turn of the decade. In fact, Ericsson is forecasting that 70% of a projected 2.1B wide-area IoT devices will use cellular technology by 2022. This is exciting news for mobile operators since the proliferation of IoT presents a huge opportunity to open new revenue streams. Mobile operators’ extensive experience of building and managing cellular networks coupled with a deep understanding of machine-based mobile solutions make them uniquely positioned to be key strategic IoT partners for cities, governments and enterprises. Consumers too will benefit from better value and efficiencies.
However, there are many technical, organizational, and regulatory hurdles still to overcome, such as cost, interoperability and security issues, as noted in this McKinsey report. The good news is that the introduction of Arm Kigen iSIM solutions has helped to address many of these challenges, by providing a more cost effective and totally secure identity that enables remote provisioning, subscription management and orchestration for MNOs, leveraging a standard and interoperable approach.
Another piece of good news is that the vibrant ecosystem of IoT developers, device makers and network operators is growing fast and we have events like this that are helping to join various partners together and enable wider adoption of cellular IoT.
Are you visiting the Mobile World Congress and fancy discussing iSIM and all things IoT? We will be joining forces with Sprint to provide video demonstration how the Arm Kigen iSIM solutions can help track assets globally. Visit stand Hall South Stand S.1702 to watch the video and catch up with our representatives.
We are also appearing on a keynote panel, at 2.30pm on 13 September, titled ‘Security and IoT – If You Don’t do It, Someone Will’. I highly recommend signing up below.
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