PARTNER CONTENT: Whilst forecasts of a huge leap in the number of connected consumer and IoT devices make headlines on a regular basis, how these devices will get connected is often overlooked.

Since 1991 we’ve been using physical SIM cards in our phones and connected devices. Every now and again they get a bit smaller but, even today, we still use them – 6 billion new ones a year!

But we have now hit a ceiling. The ever-faithful SIM card has reached the limit of its ability to scale to meet the insatiable appetite for data and connectivity taking place around the world.

Because SIMs are still physical cards, we have to manufacture them, store them, ship them and handle them, creating friction and impacting the customer experience. Even so, many players in the mobile industry protect this model, seeking to lock customers into networks, higher prices and complex supply chains.

At a time when openness and interoperability are crucial to grow revenue, particularly for the Internet of Things, it is unfortunate that key players in the industry have responded by building their walls higher, instead of knocking them down.

This is understandable. For many organisations in the mobile ecosystem, their nervous system is wired to protecting what they already have.

To many, eSIM presents a threat—after all, it is new. It enables flexibility, choice, simplicity and openness. But eSIM poses a classic prisoners’ dilemma: if industry players choose to limit the positive effects of this new innovation, they will all suffer.

Demand for faster, more intelligent, connected devices is continuing to accelerate and customers depend on the best connectivity options to be available in a simple and secure manner. But to deliver on this, the model of a single SIM card being locked to one network operator for its entire life can no longer hold true. As eSIM is adopted across the entire connectivity supply chain, it will deliver unprecedented freedom and flexibility to customers.

At Truphone, we forecast that, by 2024, seven billion eSIMs will have been activated in consumer and IoT devices around the world.

As we enter 2020, this forecast may seem crazy. Most commentators only talk about new smartphones supporting eSIM and shipments reaching the lofty heights of hundreds of millions in years to come.

We see things differently. The path to seven billion eSIM activations by 2024 is clear:

The SIM slot will disappear. Inside devices, space is at a premium and needed for new features and better batteries, driving the development of eSIM-only devices. It’s all goes digital. We have seen DVDs give way to Netflix, CDs to Spotify, game disks to Steam, cash to contactless, newspapers went online and software moved to app stores. Similarly, consumers will engage with network service providers predominantly through digital channels, leveraging the ability for eSIM to be activated instantly, whilst the 30,000 tonnes of plastic used every year in SIM cards is dramatically reduced.

• The IoT supply chain is global. It’s not scalable, cost-efficient or practical to pre-agree and select SIM cards for devices when you have no knowledge of where they will be used or will travel to. With four billion cellular IoT connections[1] forecast for 2024, integrated eSIMs will allow the decision on which connectivity service to use to be deferred to when the device is actually deployed.

• Data security is non-negotiable. A trusted mechanism to securely send and receive data for more and more connected devices is critical and will be a regulatory requirement in many scenarios. The 25 billion IoT connections[2] (cellular and non-cellular) predicted by 2025 will all need security built in and many of these will be able to leverage the security measures pre-integrated into eSIM to ensure data can be kept protected whilst minimising any additional costs for IoT devices.

• The best connectivity possible. Although only 20 per cent of the cost of an IoT device might directly relate to the connectivity, 80 per cent of the problems experienced by IoT devices are linked to the network connectivity. eSIM provides further flexibility to explore as many different connectivity options as possible.

• The great 5G SIM swap. 5G is on track to account for 15 per cent of global mobile connections by 2025[3] (1.4 billion connections), according to GSMA Intelligence. Many of these 5G-capable devices will require new SIM cards to fully realise the benefits of 5G technology. Many of the 5G activations will simply jump straight to eSIM with 5G support built-in and ready to use.

As these six themes compound, we will see the number of eSIM activations rise dramatically year-on-year.

Fundamentally eSIM is a technology that will keep up with the world around us—far into the future. Billions of eSIM-enabled devices will secure our connectivity and data; billions of new IoT devices will leverage the wide availability of mobile networks; and billions more 5G consumer devices will support advances in mobile computing, entertainment, health and AI. As we enter 2020, we are on the cusp of a major shift in the way devices connect to mobile networks.

At Truphone, we are firmly committed to a future centered on simpler mobile connectivity. We continue to keep inventing—finding new ways to solve new problems and embracing the benefits that eSIM brings to the entire mobile ecosystem.

Truphone will be at MWC 2020 showcasing how we are making eSIM work for you. We’ll be in stand 6H21 in Hall 6 for the duration of the event. Make sure you drop by and say hello.

Download our free eSIM Buyer’s Guide here.

By Michael Moorfield, director of Product at Truphone – Original Article can be found here.

[1] GSMA Intelligence

[2] https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/new-gsma-study-operators-must-look-beyond-connectivity-to-increase-share/

[3] https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/new-gsma-study-5g-to-account-for-15-of-global-mobile-industry-by-2025/

Note – the original recording of this video had two audio streams, causing an echo.  A new recording will be made and re-posted.

Link to the AutomatedContainerTracking-2015 Study.

If you cannot name something, you can hold no power over it.

Let’s talk about the Internet of Things (IoT). You’ve likely heard this buzzword, sometimes along with 5G and Artificial Intelligence and a bunch of others. IoT is simply a new generation of automation. Like factory automation or office automation, IoT creates the ability to automate tasks and functions outside the factory or office that would have previously proven too complicated or too expensive.

The personal computer is a hugely powerful tool to create efficiency in a business. When computers were first developed, they weren’t widely used outside of special situations. But once they became more compact and cost-effective, they evolved into a standard part of running any modern business. The same is true for other types of automation, and right now is the inflection point where IoT is starting to be useful to the average small business.

What businesses can get value out of IoT? That’s the same as asking what businesses can get value out of desktop computers, office software or the Internet. And it’s the same answer, basically all of them. Because things are still new, there aren’t widely recognized names yet for common uses of IoT. Before computers became commonplace, “word processing” wasn’t a thing, it was called typing. In this discussion of IoT, we’ll be talking about four key aspects of IoT as business automation:

Make money
Save money
Legal compliance
Reputation protection

In the context of these items, we’ll discuss a series of concepts or paradigms where IoT fundamentally changes basic business cases. In a decade of doing IoT projects, we’ve come across the 10 business models below the most in our direct experience.

Track & Report
Fleet Management
Need Based Servicing
Preventative Maintenance
Control/Management as a Service
Contract Enforcement
Vendor Managed Inventory
US Medical Insurance Logging
Generation of Measured Carbon Offsets both + and –
Market Research

Make Money

So let’s talk about making money, which is about creating or capitalizing on new markets. This is one of the hardest aspects in business in general, so it’s not surprising it’s uncommon in IoT as well. Examples would include logging usage and details of durable medical equipment. This results in expanding the market for the product and allowing for alternate business models like rental, lease or equipment as a service.

Save Money

Another way to look at things is by saving money. There are actually a fair number of IoT examples in this category. Need Based Servicing is simply the idea of only servicing something when that specific unit needs it vs. periodically checking whether it needs servicing or not. Garbage cans, trash compactors, recycling bins, etc. are good examples. The more labor and equipment needed, the greater the cost savings.

Legal Compliance

Another significant value of IoT is in enforcing, documenting, and verifying compliance to laws and regulations. This is no easy task, as regulations are continuously amended across all industries, and IoT can help your business evolve to match it. Doing so helps to avoid infractions and penalties as well as lower implementation costs.

Reputation Protection

You’ve spent considerable time and money building your brand and securing your place in your industry. So, your reputation can make or break your company and greatly affect your bottom line and how people view your brand. Legal compliance is just as much about protecting your brand as it is about avoiding penalties. Creative IoT solutions can be used to protect and enhance your brand. Examples such as proactive measurement of CO2 emissions and energy consumption, along with the documented measurement of reductions based on improvements, can lead to high value messaging that differentiates you from the competition.Over a series of articles, we’ll discuss the 10 listed IoT business paradigms, examples and ideas for additional implementations.

Today we’re switching things up and doing another session with Chris Black showing an introduction to 3D printing.

In today’s livestream, I went through some interesting examples from our most recent physical conference, AgFuse.io. You can check out more examples by going to Ag

I’m switching the topic up today. The topic was originally scheduled to be about, “Computational Genetics and the State of the Speed of Vaccine Design. Possible to Create an IoT COVID19 Sensor?” – we have rescheduled that for a future week.

In today’s video we shared some insights on how we’re building and marketing the virtual conference. This is really a bunch of proprietary information that I probably should not be sharing too widely – but I don’t think there is a massive number of people following this blog right so I’m not too worried about it. It would be great if you read this to drop me a line and let me know if you have any thoughts on how we can better build out this conference to your liking.

In today’s video above I talk about the following:

• Overview of our Discord App(s) – IoTFuse and Covid19 Resources.
• Taking a look at the traffic we have received through Facebook and Twitter advertising and the various experiments we have performed.

About the Discord App / Show Floor

I have been running conferences for five years and there are two main benefits that I typically hear from attendees over that time period which I am looking to try to achieve in a virtual format:

• Transference of knowledge and skills (hence why my company is called Knowledge Conferences)
• The capability to meet and network with people who folks already may know and new folks

While the transference of knowledge in a virtual space is fairly well established, particularly in a technical sphere, what is less certain is the, “floor session,” part of the show – the capability to meet, network and talk with others.  This is a newly explored space within the digital realm, and humanity has been thrust right into the crux of it.  While there is absolutely no substitute for physical contact, we are now living in a time when physical contact is in a sense, “risky and illegal,” and as such it is our job to really try whatever we can to build technical solutions as a substitute.

Bringing people together within a massive Discord app on an event day may be one way to help make this happen.  However the Discord app in it of itself may not be enough – while Discord does allow seamless voice and text chat, there’s still the question of face-to-face interaction and interface.

From what I can tell over the last couple of weeks the way that people have achieved face-to-face work and interaction has been via a vast array of webinars and meeting applications.  So one question that comes up is – do we force people into a particular paradigm?  Do we force people to download one particular app and depend upon what?  What if someone is using Skype because it is sponsored by their work?  What if someone is on an Enterprise computer that does not allow new software to be downloaded?  Our thought is – it should be a laissez faire system and allow people to choose however they wish to accomplish point-to-point interaction.  Why introduce and build new software when there are already so many established solutions?  This appears to be similar to how things work in, “real life,” in that at a conference there are many different ways that people choose to talk and follow up with each other – the conference organizer does not, “mandate” that everyone only exchange information and talk to each other in a particular way – attendees have freedom of choice.

So basically, the Discord App acts as a show floor, while people can send each other Zoom and Go-To meetings and Skype invitations as they so choose and according to mutual technological capability.

About Marketing a Digital Event

Whereas a physical event has a geographic boundary and domain, a Digital Event is limited to the business model dictated by the ticket price that it can command and the cost of advertising to sell said tickets.  As such, we have been running multiple rounds of experiments to determine how people may best respond to a virtual event.

“Creatives” Experimentation

The first iteration of experimentation is the ad copy – which type of ads do people respond best to?  We created and tested five different variations against each other across multiple geographic domains.  The result of this test was a clear winner.  Often these, “winners” are the ones you may not expect to be the winner – that was the case in this experiment.  We took this, “winning graphic,” and duplicated it in further tests which we discuss below.

Geographic Experimentation

We deployed ads in key cities that we thought may have interest in our events based upon known, “tech sectors” within a particular region.  Some of the results for the first round of testing in terms of positive response were shown below.  Mind you, this was with mixed creatives, so running another test with a, “known winner,” creative may create more certain results.

There were also clear differences between a map shown of, “All Visitors,” to a particular landing page vs. a map showing, “visitors from Facebook,” for a particular landing page.

Funnel Experimentation

We compared different parts of the funnel for cost and found that selling conversions was much less expensive than selling toward repeat, bottom and top of the funnel buyers, which is of course exactly as expected.

Audience

We kept the audience consistent as a, “lookalike” audience.  The risk here is of course that people who attend physical conferences may not be likely to attend digital conferences – there may be different subsets of preferences.  However we are looking at this whole round of testing as a baseline to be tweaked later.  It is best to only test one change at a time wherever possible.

Summary / Moving Forward

The above results are backward looking, and in fact are dated at the time of authoring of this blog.  We have run through a few iterations of experiments in the past couple of weeks, and new data continues to come in as results improve.  What’s important to keep in mind is:

• Everything in marketing can be accepted as a hypothesis, human behavior is unpredictable.
• Establishing, “business ratios,” are important.  Much of the above data can be broken down into single figures such as – clicks on ads / purchases.