In a panel moderated by Frank Sauber, Director of Ecosystem Partners at Sigfox, Marco Veneri, Low-Power RF Marketing Manager, STMicroelectronics, Phillipe Fremont, European Vice President of Technical Marketing, Avnet, and Frederic Valentin, IoT Wireless Connectivity Solutions Marketing Manager, ON Semiconductor discuss the IoT from a device maker’s viewpoint.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- According to Veneri, IoT device makers face four major challenges: power consumption, maintenance and management of node costs, business model and value chain propositions and security.
- Valentin outlined three factors specifically related to the Sigfox ecosystem. The first is that device makers need to put first things first and change their business model. The second is that customers need to be provided with several connectivity solutions. The third is the challenge of finding reliable ecosystem partners.
- Sigfox is helping to generate more leads and opportunities, as well as creating more use cases such as asset tracking, smart metering, backup communication, smart cities and smart homes.
- Security is a growing concern for device makers. Companies are bringing their own experience of security to the Sigfox market and embedding security needs into products for the Sigfox ecosystem.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
- Veneri on getting to market quickly: “In order to enable device makers to go quickly on to the market, it is really an advantage to have a full solution that can be easily tweaked to build up their own application. They need tools, they need ecosystem, they need the software competence and they need the device.”
- Valentin on their support model: “We continue to develop out-of-the-box solutions so that we really support our customers to develop the right solution for their market. We see most fail at the end of the day to introduce their products on time so we try to remove the obstacles. We want to make sure we take every hurdle out of their path so they can really focus on making their product successful.”
- Fremont on being successful: “I think IoT is a thousand simple things but if one step is missed, it would probably fail. So, for people to be able to understand the steps, product managers supporting customers and services is becoming the biggest part of the value chain.”
SIGFOX CONNECT
After a great success in 2017 with more than 1200 attendees and 120 booths, the Sigfox World IoT Expo is back in 2018 and becomes Sigfox Connect. Attendance is also open to the general public during the second day.
