Semiconductors
Fast-tracking massive cellular IoT development and deployment
By Martin Lesund, technical product manager, Nordic Semiconductor T globally[1]
he McKinsey Global Institute, an economics research firm, estimates that by 2030 the IoT could reach between $5.5 trillion to $12.6 trillion in value . While this figure includes
consumer IoT products and service values, a significant proportion will be driven by what have been termed massive IoT applications. Where traditional IoT refers to anything from a single connected device to localized deployments, massive IoT describes networks of tens of thousands, even millions, of devices per square kilometre. These vast deployments unleash the true power of IoT at scale, supporting applications such as crop monitoring and livestock tracking in agriculture; traffic management, street lighting, waste, utilities, public transport, and other smart city services; industrial IoT infrastructure monitoring; and even environmental sustainability efforts.
As billions of these devices are brought online, the potential to revolutionize data analysis, automation, drive new efficiencies, and power AI is immense.
IoT’s cellular future
To reach this potential, massive IoT must be based on a networking technology that supports scalability and versatility and whose connectivity can cover the sheer distances involved. Moreover, while some use cases may be intentionally uplink- only for power management reasons, many applications require bidirectional end-to-end communication without the traditional three-tier, sensor-gateway- cloud, architecture. Gateways, at this scale, undermine both the scalability and simplicity required by these massive deployments, adding operational complexity, potential latency, and reliability challenges, as well as significant costs. Offering ubiquitous coverage, scalable connectivity, and standards-based interoperability, cellular IoT, specifically LTE-M
26 October 2025
and NB-IoT, meets these challenges head-on. Rather than extending device connectivity with gateways, cellular IoT extends network coverage. According to Statista, NB-IoT and LTE-M already make up 47 per cent of the low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) market[2]
. That makes the technology the
market-leading LPWAN for secure and reliable long-range connectivity and a foundational part of the IoT.
However, despite its traction, cellular IoT has typically been complex to build, deploy, and maintain. This stems from the constrained nature of the devices themselves. Given the scale at which they are being deployed, end-point nodes are cost-sensitive, power-constrained, and must be simple to maintain and manage. Yet these difficulties only point toward the true challenge that lies at the very core of cellular IoT development and deployment: fragmentation.
Components in Electronics
A complex landscape
The IoT ecosystem is complex. From chip- to-cloud, the number of stakeholders and variables involved can paralyze developers and companies attempting to bring new solutions to market.
At the product design level alone, the supply chain is already incredibly convoluted. One company might supply the cellular module, while another supplies the modem, another the microprocessor, and yet another the power management. Not only does this make design more complex and add costs, but it can also impact power consumption as the component parts are not optimized to work together.
In turn, designers can be confused as to where to turn for engineering tools and technical support. This complexity persists up the stack, through connectivity middleware, software, to cloud service providers, device management platforms and security.
Indeed, deploying and maintaining fleets of cellular IoT products at this scale demands specialized infrastructure to safeguard performance across the IoT product’s service life, through frequent supervision and maintenance. Examples include diagnostics, configuration updates, security updates, and software and firmware over-the-air updates. There will also be occasions when IoT devices fail and require troubleshooting and repair. In short, it demands a robust and capable digital platform that works intuitively with the rest of the stack.
One singular solution There is one clear solution to all this: consolidating and simplifying the entire supply chain and development stacks down to one full-stack solution provider. By accessing cellular IoT silicon, software, development tools and
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