Oyster Bay, New York - 09 May 2018: Device management services, which include device provisioning, software and firmware updates, and device monitoring, will generate revenues of US$20.5 billion by 2023. ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies, forecasts that IoT device management services will be a necessary component of any significant IoT solution moving forward, with 70% of revenues being generated within the industrial, automotive, and telematics verticals.

“As IoT solutions continue to shift toward performing more processing and computing at the edge, devices need to constantly be updated to maintain solution security and improve overall analytics solution value,” commented Ryan Harbison, Research Analyst at ABI Research. “If a device is not able to be updated, its long-term value ceases. As a result, operations teams need central tools such as device management solutions to enable efficient remote maintenance. With potentially hundreds or thousands of devices in a solution, it is simply not feasible to fix and update devices after they are deployed.”

Device management revenues as a percentage of overall device and application platform revenues will remain relatively constant throughout the forecast period. The value of these services will continue to be seen by providers and end users as a necessary component of any end-to-end IoT solution. However, there is and will continue to be a commoditization of device management services that will be driven by competition among existing service providers, the growth of standards in the market, and new device management solutions from existing cloud providers such as Google, AWS, and Microsoft.

“While device management commoditization is happening to some extent, value can still be extracted by vendors who integrate them with other components of the IoT value chain to create a differentiated solution that drives value for both end-users and providers,” concluded Harbison. “The real value in device management solutions is when they are used to enhance performance in some other area of the IoT solution, such as on the device ( e.g. Telit, Sierra Wireless, Cradlepoint, or Eurotech ) or as part of a larger platform offering ( e.g. Bosch, Mentor Graphic, or Wind River). The companies that are succeeding in this space are not pure-play device management providers, but are rather those that integrate their DM offerings with other IoT solution components to drive differentiated value for the IoT market as a whole.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s Device Management Services for the Edge-Centric IoT report. This report is part of the company’s M2M, IoT & IoE research service, which includes research, data, and Executive Foresights.