This report provides Transforma Insights’ view on the IoT market for Disposable Devices. This segment comprises the tracking of items with single-use connected devices. Typically, this is conducted by manufacturers tracking items through third parties’ supply chains or vendors tracking parcels through postal or courier services.
Manufacturers often look to monitor and track their high-value and theft-prone goods during transport. This becomes important for indicating when goods are damaged, tampered with, lost, or stolen during transit leading to loss and product rejection. As a result of rejected shipments, businesses will not only owe financial compensation to their customers but also face a negative impact on their business reputation.
The use of low-cost disposable trackers can help in overcoming these challenges and businesses can limit their dependency on logistics partners for real-time monitoring of their shipments.
The report provides a detailed definition of the sector, analysis of market development and profiles of the key vendors in the space. It also provides a summary of the current status of adoption and Transforma Insights’ ten-year forecasts for the market. The forecasts include analysis of the number of IoT connections by geography, the technologies used and revenue.
A full set of forecast data, including country-level forecasts, sector breakdowns and public/private network splits, is available through the IoT Forecast tool.
This section of the report begins with the definition and features of disposable or single-use tracking devices. For instance, some of these devices are used to monitor the condition of goods like their temperature and humidity. It then explains how these devices are suitable for manufacturers and businesses aiming to monitor the quality of perishable goods (like pharmaceutical products, beverages, and food items). It also identifies the two factors that will drive the disposable tracking device market, even though the market remains relatively small.
It then bifurcates into two sections: “LPWA is the market enabler” and “Challenges”.
This section explains the communication technologies used in these devices and charts their benefits and challenges as well. For instance, while LPWA is cheaper, consumes less power, and covers wide areas, its network availability is fragmented, which is a major downside (especially in the context of international transport). It also talks about the scope of other technologies like 5G mMTC (including NB-IoT and LTE-M), LoRaWAN, and Sigfox.
The “Challenges” section has been further bifurcated into the following subsections.
This section explains the challenges associated with these trackers, with a particular focus on the disposal of lithium batteries (stemming from factors like the lack of uniform government regulations and limited consumer awareness), which if disposed of inappropriately can have a negative impact on the environment. It also talks about how some disposable tracker providers (like Tive, which is running the “Tive Get Green” initiative) are taking the responsibility to recycle and refurbish the batteries used in disposable devices.
This section focuses on the value of the tracked items since it should be able to justify the deployment of disposable trackers. Besides, it also talks about other scenarios which may hamper the adoption of these devices. For instance, sophisticated track and trace solutions offer a variety of network connectivity options including BLE, Wi-Fi, UWB, satellite, and cellular networks (which effectively deal with the issue of fragmentation associated with LPWA), and they are reusable as well, which may sincerely affect the growth trajectory of disposable devices.
It also provides a few examples of relevant IoT deployments in this application, like Alpine Fresh collaborating with Tive for shipment tracking to monitor the temperature, location, and humidity of shipped goods, and R&D Nurseries partnering with Emerson for tropical plant shipment tracking.
The key vendors section lists some of the main providers of products and services related to the market such as Emerson, Moeco, NanoThings, Tive, and 7P Solutions. The report provides profiles of the various vendors including aspects most relevant to this Application Group, such as product offerings, pricing, financial results, and technology.
In the market forecasts section, we provide a summary of the forecasts from the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database:
The report charts the growth in the number of connected disposable devices which will grow from 1.4 million in 2023 to 65.7 million in 2033.
Transforma Insights forecasts are compiled on a country-by-country basis. This report includes a regional summary, showing splits between Australasia, Greater China, North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America, MENA, Russia & Central Asia, South East Asia, South Korea, India & South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforma Insights’ IoT forecasts include splits between the various connectivity technologies as follows: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC, 5G non-mMTC, LPWA (non-mMTC), Satellite, Short Range, and Other.
This section discusses which technologies will be used in the disposable devices application group.
This part of the report discusses the market growth in terms of revenue (module revenue, service wrap revenue, and VAC revenue). Transforma Insights estimates that the revenue in the Disposable Devices Application Group will grow at a CAGR of 62%.
