IoT opportunity in the world of semiconductor companies

Semiconductor industry trends forcing change

The semiconductor industry has created a tremendous, lasting significance on society and our daily lives. Every technological device that houses a microprocessor or transistor—from the smallest calculator to cell phones, or even microwaves—contains semiconductor science and microchips. In a day where we’re all powered up, plugged in, and connected using technology constantly, the IoT semiconductor market is substantial and projected IoT semiconductor spending in 2020 is estimated/expected to be $34B.

However, the highly fragmented IoT market covering broad end applications makes it challenging for a single semiconductor company to own the complete solutions. So how can they participate in this growing market? They can start by building an ecosystem of partners and enabling these partners with a digital sales platform.

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Our approach: Welcome the world of IoT

There is tremendous opportunity for semiconductor companies to provide value to their end customers by diversifying into IoT markets.

• Build a business ecosystem. In order to provide an end-to-end IoT solution, we need device manufacturers, communication hardware, connectivity protocols, cloud providers, IoT platforms, analytics and more. On top of that, IoT is a nascent and fragmented markets with different end customer needs. How can one single company possess all of the technologies? The nature of the IoT market calls for an ecosystem of companies that share a vision and have complementary assets and skills. Semiconductor companies are well positioned to build such an ecosystem as they architect, catalyze, enable, and manage the whole solution jointly developed by the ecosystem partners.
• Enable ecosystem partners. A sustainable partner ecosystem needs to create a win-win situation for all parties involved. To form a successful ecosystem, semiconductor companies need to understand, develop and nurture the partners to enable their growth. This may require providing them technical, business, and financial support.
• Create a digital sales platform. A good approach to building a business ecosystem is to build it around a concrete customer case. However, the IoT markets are so fragmented with varying end-user requirements in different industry verticals and use cases. It is nearly impossible to sell to such a broad and fragmented market without more digital platform to bring the providers of different components of the end-to-end solution together. An integrated digital sales platform will enable the partners to work together from.
• Ensuring security and privacy. Security and privacy can make or break the adoption of IoT products. Challenges include not only hardware vulnerabilities, but also security gaps created during integration and implementation of IoT systems as well as those created during remote device access, communication, and management. Features and solutions that mitigate these issues often include software-based API security. Such security measures can authenticate and authorize data movements between devices.
• Customize by industry need. In addition to these common themes, nuances in each vertical require specific product and go-to-market strategies. To sell offerings into these markets, it's important to understand what customers are trying to achieve. Semiconductor companies should be particularly interested in IoT opportunities in the following: industrial, automotive, smart cities, health care, and consumer. Our full report provides an in-depth look at each of the sectors.

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Think like an entrepreneur

The IoT market presents a huge opportunity but it comes with great challenges in both product development and go-to-market approach. Semiconductor companies with a comprehensive approach to address these challenges are well positioned to capture this growth opportunity.

This report provides deeper insights on IoT strategy for semiconductor technology, product and business strategy leaders by:

• Outlining go-to-market strategy for the IoT market, including industry-specific recommendations.
• Assessing the landscape and opportunity size of five major IoT markets: Industrial, Automotive, Smart City, Health Care, and Consumer.
• Providing the sample applications and additional product and capability requirements in each market.
• Uncovering potential opportunity beyond semiconductor device sales by industry.

Download the full report to see how you can leverage the power of IoT for growing revenue and shareholder value in detail.

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