“China played a pivotal role in the market’s resurgence with a robust 21% year-on-year growth, primarily driven by the significant expansion in POS (point-of-sale), particularly soundbox, as well as automotive and asset-tracking applications,” said principal analyst Tina Lu. Lu said the India market grew by 31% year-on-year, emerging as the only country outside China to register growth. India’s performance was driven by rising deployments in smart metering and tracking applications. “Government initiatives supporting digitalisation, combined with an expanding ecosystem of IoT deployments, contributed to India’s strong performance. In contrast, the rest of the world saw a decline due to inventory corrections,” Lu said. Chinese vendors, particularly Eigencomm and ASR, are among the top competitors of multinationals such as Qualcomm and MediaTek in India’s IoT modules market, and have been gaining market share on the back of their low-cost products.
Chinese vendors Quectel, China Mobile and Fibocom led the charts with a share of 37%, 9% and 7%, respectively, according to the research agency’s data. Sunsea, Lierda and Telit Cinterion ranked fourth, fifth and sixth with a share of 6%, 5% and 4%, respectively.
Heightened restrictions
Despite the overall market recovery, leading IoT module vendors faced increasing geopolitical challenges. Quectel and Fibocom, two of the largest China-based IoT module suppliers, may face heightened restrictions in international markets, said Counterpoint. It noted that Quectel was added to the US 1260H list, further complicating its ability to operate in western markets. “These developments have prompted concerns over supply chain stability and vendor diversification strategies among global IoT adopters,” Counterpoint said.
