Last week we at Transforma Insights published our annual Communications Service Provider IoT Peer Benchmarking Report. As with previous years this included a ranking of the 27 CSPs based on our view of the capabilities and approach.
As with last year, we included an assessment of ‘horizontal’ capabilities relevant to delivering IoT connectivity, looking at the overall capabilities of each of the CSPs such as how multi-country connectivity is addressed, compliance, scalability, mechanisms for global traffic management, CMP capabilities, devices, security and consulting. Unlike last year, the 2025 report’s assessment also included a separate ‘vertical’ dimension.
This blog post explores the two dimensions, with a particular focus on the new vertical assessment.
Our assessment of the horizontal capabilities of CSPs considers their overall approach to delivering global cellular-based IoT connectivity. We rate the CSPs on ten categories, applying a weighting to each. This approach is broadly the same as we have adopted in previous years, albeit taking what had previously been two dimensions (related to the ability to deliver IoT connectivity vs broader IoT-related services) and compresses them into a single dimension. The ten categories, in descending order of weighting (although some are weighted equally with their neighbours) is:
Transforma Insights’ view has always been that the diversity of IoT means the demands of one use case or vertical will be very different from others. Consequently the ability of the different CSPs to address those requirements will also vary.
Another tenet of our view of the market is that experience in addressing a particular use case is a significant asset; we will often recommend to enterprise adopters to seek out vendors that ‘have’ addressed their particular use case (or similar) rather than those that simply say they ‘can’.
Based on those two considerations, we have added a dimension to the analysis this year which considers specifically (a) experience and (b) expertise in addressing a set of eight use case groups.
‘Vertical Experience’ is measured by a combination of the most wins, the biggest deals, and the greatest diversity of customers.
The starting point for ‘Vertical Expertise’ is the overall Horizontal Expertise noted earlier, augmented by further weighting depending on capabilities relevant to the use case group being considered. For instance, global orchestration capabilities are far more important for automotive OEMs, whereas addressing the energy/metering space generally has little requirement for multi-country support, and putting in place optimisation features for video streaming is relevant for video analytics. Additionally, vertical-specific capabilities related to consulting expertise, products or features are considered in the Vertical Expertise rating.
For the vertical analysis we selected eight use case groups to represent the diversity of IoT. We selected the eight to represent the widest possible range of IoT applications, considering varying levels of mobility, distribution, and bandwidth.
Ideally, we would like to do this analysis individually for every one of the 270 IoT applications that we have in our segmentation , but that degree of granularity is impractical for this report. Some degree of filtering is necessary, with the selected use cases representing the lion’s share of the cellular-based IoT connectivity opportunity.
Similarly, some aggregation of similar use cases also makes sense in order to cast the net as widely as possible.
The eight use case groups are:
The eight comprise a range of use cases that include high and low bandwidth, highly mobile and static devices, and those that are usually deployed in a single country through to those with global distribution. Their approximate ratings for each of the metrics are presented in Fthe report, along with an indication of the relative size of the market opportunity of each. Collectively they account for just over 90% of the cellular IoT connectivity market.
We note also that many of the CSPs profiled in this report also provide, to a greater or lesser extent, completely horizontal capabilities used by other CSPs, including licensing of Connectivity Management Platforms, MVNE-type support, and sponsored roaming. These capabilities are highly horizontal in function, meaning the providers of those services often score higher on horizontal capabilities than the ability to address specific verticals.
In the report, for each of the eight use case groups we present each of the 27 Communications Services Providers rated on their ability to address the requirements of the vertical (‘Vertical Expertise’) and experience in addressing it (‘Vertical Experience’). The expertise metric is derived in part from overall horizontal capabilities, augmented with whatever particular vertical capabilities the CSP has. The experience metric is based on scale of the CSP’s operations in that vertical, the number clients, diversity of clients, focus on the segment, and heritage in addressing it.
In the case of the vertical use case analysis presented here, the size of the dot equates to our estimate of the number of connections that the CSP has relating to the relevant use case, rather than revenue, as considered in the aggregate analysis. In this analysis, the scale of revenue per connection for any operator is unlikely to vary too wildly, unlike with the aggregated analysis, so this is considered an appropriate metric. The estimate of number of connections is based on a Transforma Insights estimate on how the CSPs’ connections divide between the eight categories, and other categories not considered here. The size of the dots relates only to our estimate of relative scale within the specific use case group, with relative size being adjusted according to the overall size of the segment.
The positioning of each CSP in the charts is based on Transforma Insights’ estimates and calculations, based on information provided from the CSPs on key clients and focus sectors. However, we should reinforce that they are our subjective estimates. The company names have been abridged for the purpose of saving space in the charts.
As noted above, for each of the use case groups in the report we publish a matrix of ‘Vertical Expertise’ vs ‘Vertical Experience’. The chart below presents one of those, for ‘asset tracking/logistics/supply chain’, as an example.
This category includes applications related to mobile and fixed assets related to the supply chain including container tracking, stock level monitoring, supply chain specific environmental monitoring, and smart lockers.
This use case group tends to be more effectively addressed by those CSPs that demonstrate capabilities in addressing multi-country deployments, including relating to compliance, as well as those with their own propositions targeting the supply chain space.
Transforma Insights has always been rather wary of using a single 2x2 matrix as a mechanism for demonstrating the capabilities of the CSPs that we rank. Capabilities vary significantly by vertical, which is why we introduced this vertical element to the analysis, although even this is an aggregation and does not cover every IoT use case.
They also vary substantially by geography. There is a geographical aspect to any buyer’s decision of which CSPs to shortlist. For many use cases, the deployments will be within a single geography meaning that a local CSP, e.g. an MNO with that geography within its network footprint, will clearly be a prime candidate. Adding that further dimension into the rating adds a further additional dimension of complexity to the analysis.
Short of expanding the scope even further (to an unmanageable level, we think) we are limited to offering the view that enterprise seeking advice on vendor selection for a project should consult with Transforma Insights to incorporate all possible considerations in the shortlisting.
All that said, the necessities of promoting the report mean that we want to present a single aggregated view of the market, in terms of which are the leaders. We recognise that this is extremely reductive, but there is a promotional benefit in giving the people what they want: a single 2x2 matrix.
To achieve that we take our horizontal view on capability, and combine it with a weighted average based on the cellular connectivity revenue generated by the use case group in 2024 according to the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database and the rating for each as described above.
For reference this is not an exact straight percentage based on share of global connectivity revenue. If that was our approach, position for automotive OEM would swamp all the other sectors meaning that this would become more of a connected car analysis than IoT overall. And, we should note, there are only so many cars on the road; growth opportunities mostly sit elsewhere, with the percentage share of connectivity revenue accounted for by connected car set to fall by a fifth in the next decade. Note: that’s share, it’s not falling overall, it’s just that other segments grow faster. And, interestingly, the share coming from these eight use case groups drops from around 90% to around 80% over that forecast period.
The overall rating is presented in the chart below, which can also be found in the press release: New Transforma Insights study identifies market leaders and key trends in IoT connectivity.
