Noncellular Wireless Connectivity Seen Reaching 10 Billion IC Shipments by 2021
The global noncellular wireless connectivity market will reach more than 10 billion annual integrated circuit (IC) shipments by 2021, said ABI Research Tuesday. Smartphones will continue to be the largest market, but Bluetooth mesh networking, emerging Wi-Fi protocols, enhancements to 802.15.4 such as ZigBee 3.0 and Thread -- plus the growing trend to develop multiprotocol connectivity SoCs -- will create new opportunities in IoT vertical markets, said ABI.
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Bluetooth will be in 60 percent of IC-based devices by 2021, with mobile phones being less than 45 percent of total Bluetooth shipments, ABI said. Bluetooth Smart will continue to grow and branch into new verticals, reaching 16 percent of devices during the period, led by smart home and beacon applications, connected home products and wearables, it said.
The most significant growth in Wi-Fi will come from IoT verticals, including wearables, automotive, the smart home, and other nascent IoT categories, said ABI, but mobile phones will still be 55 percent of the Wi-Fi-enabled device market by 2021. New Wi-Fi frequency bands -- 802.11ad (WiGig) and sub-1GHz Wi-Fi 802.11ah (HaLow) -- will open new opportunities for 802.11ad in the networking, mobile device, computing, and peripheral segments, and for 802.11ah in low-power IoT devices and wireless sensor network applications, said the researcher. By 2021, Wi-Fi will be in 47 percent of all devices.
ZigBee and Thread 802.15.4-based technologies will grow by a compound annual rate of 60 percent between 2016 and 2021 on smart home growth, said ABI. The technology will also advance through energy management and smart city applications: building automation, smart metering, smart lighting, and industrial, to more than 28 percent of devices in the segment by the end of the forecast period. But 802.15.4 will be limited to 9 percent of the device market by 2021 since it’s not a factor in smartphone and CE categories, ABI said.
Near-field communication, meanwhile, is targeting new opportunities for mobile payments in smartphones and wearables, and for secure pairing and provisioning of IoT devices, said ABI.
The growing implementation of combination ICs will help drive the wireless connectivity market, particularly in IoT verticals, because they “eliminate the need for multiple connectivity ICs, reduce complexity and cost, and give manufacturers greater flexibility in targeting multiple applications and use cases using a single SoC,” said ABI analyst Andrew Zignani. Devices with multiprotocol chipsets will be “more future-proof and faster to market,” creating greater scalability and flexibility for OEMs designing a connected device, Zignani said.