Total shipments of reduced-capability (RedCap) 5G IoT modules, offering 5G-based alternatives to mid-range 4G-level LTE Cat-4 and LTE Cat-6 units, will top 80 million over the next five years, in the period to 2029, reckons ABI Research. Further-reduced (‘enhanced’) RedCap (eRedCap) IoT modules, representing a second offspring of the RedCap standard, offering 5G alternatives to lower-range LTE-Cat-1 and Cat-1bis hardware, offer an even “greater market opportunity”, it said.
Seventy-one percent of all RedCap modules (56 million out of the 80 million forecast) will be based on eRedCap in the period; the rest (29 percent, 23 million units) will be on straight release-17 level RedCap, according to the forecast. ABI Research notes the likely role of RedCap was to migrate the higher-end of the LTE-based low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT market, earmarked for NB-IoT and LTE-M, but often using LTE-Cat-1 and Cat-1bis, onto 5G networks.
It said: “5G RedCap was finalized to provide a pathway from 4G to 5G for mid-range devices, whose throughput requirements sit between those of LPWA and enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB). This makes 5G RedCap particularly interesting for IoT. The second iteration, eRedCap, will reduce complexity further to unlock another sizeable market for OEMs that use, or plan to use, LTE-Cat-1 and Cat-1bis. These LTE categories serve a substantial pool of IoT applications.”
The research is available here. The company notes “significant interest” in RedCap from chipset makers Qualcomm, MediaTek, UNISOC, and ASR Microelectronics. It also points to early moves by France-based IoT chipmaker Sequans, which has just sold its LTE-based IoT assets to Qualcomm, to develop an eRedCap chip, and put major focus on 5G-based IoT projects. “We can expect more silicon vendors to follow in what is projected to be a hyper-competitive space,” it said.
Jonathan Budd, industry analyst at ABI Research, commented: “5G RedCap is a series of network and device optimizations that strips back device complexity… [and provide] an affordable pathway to 5G for IoT device OEMs that do not require the full spectrum of 5G capabilities. The mid-tier LTE categories have proven valuable in connecting IoT devices; RedCap delivers LTE-equivalent throughput performance, with assurance of network longevity into the 5G era.”
He added: “As a replacement for LTE Cat-1 and Cat-1bis, eRedCap will be widely applicable in connecting devices across the IoT application landscape. Chipset and module manufacturers will seek to attain customer loyalty as early as possible.”
