Invoxia and Sequans Take Massive IoT to Consumers with Asset Tracking

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2020, Invoxia’s new LTE-M-based GPS Tracker was launched. It is intended to be available off-the-shelf for ease of use, 5G-compatible for future-proofing, and power-efficient, with up to ten months of operation on a single charge. In Invoxia’s opinion, the product will exemplify a new generation of asset trackers. Many asset trackers today rely on LTE Cat.1, which is less well future-proofed and less power-efficient and yet has been a go-to for device Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) while LTE-M and Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) coverage has been built-out worldwide. The new Invoxia GPS Tracker will be available in the United States in April 2020 for US$149 and is already for sale in 15 European countries. The tracker is monitored via a mobile app and a two-year connectivity subscription is included in the sticker price, after which Invoxia will bill users US$3.25 per month. In Europe the product has three years of inclusive connectivity and a EUR€9.99 annual fee thereafter.

With a range of cellular Low-Power Wide Area (LPWA) chipsets and suppliers to choose from, Invoxia selected the Monarch System-in-Package (SiP) from French semiconductor manufacturer Sequans. Sequans has launched several chipsets under the Monarch brand. The 66430 SiP model consists of a Radio Frequency Front End (RFFE) by Skywork Solutions and Sequans’ own LTE-M/NB-IoT baseband processor integrated onto a single die. It is notable that Invoxia has chosen a chipset-based connectivity solution, requiring a separate antenna, SIM holder, and Global Positioning System (GPS) chip, instead of using an all-in-one cellular “module.” The world’s leading module vendors—Quectel, SIMCom, Gemalto, Telit, and Sierra Wireless—are paying close attention to the incursion of chipset-based IoT solutions into their traditional market. Chipsets are best used in the simplest devices, where form factor, Bill of Materials (BOM), and/or power consumption savings may be had, as well as where large volumes of devices are manufactured.

Thus far, it is smartwatches in the consumer IoT market and OEM telematics (i.e., auto makers) in enterprise IoT that have most strongly adopted embedded cellular chipsets. Most LTE-M and NB-IoT chipset suppliers are content to supply module manufacturers, but with the Monarch range Sequans actively sought to create products that require as few additional components as possible, allowing any device OEM to become its own connectivity integrator. Monarch has removed the need for Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filters and has included on-board Random Access Memory (RAM) and even an application processor. Unsurprisingly, with its direct-to-vendor strategy, Sequans has only achieved minor penetration in the LTE-M and NB-IoT module market, where chipset manufacturers Qualcomm, HiSilicon, Mediatek, and RDA currently dominate. Invoxia’s GPS chipset supplier for its new tracker is u-Blox.

To date, the market for connecting both high-volume, low-cost and low-volume, high-cost assets has been dominated by the enterprise sector. Subscription-based business models are rare in consumer IoT, but general-purpose asset trackers help to bring the consumer market into play at last as a driver for massive connectivity. LTE-M and NB-IoT are higher efficiency, lower cost cellular technologies suited to affordably connecting objects of any value, and it is low value objects that are the most numerous. An end user may attach a tracker to anything, with Invoxia’s being marketed directly to consumers for myriad uses, the examples suggested by the manufacturer being “vehicles, kids, and precious belongings.” Critically, tracking is not the utility that is provided; tracking is the ability that enables utility. The purpose of trackers like Invoxia’s is protection against theft, based on notifications when an asset moves without authorization or strays too far from where it should be.

Vehicles are an especially valid object for consumers to privately track, despite the increasing number of vehicles with built-in wide area connectivity. A consumer’s tracker operates as a service on ones’ own terms and is fully controlled by them. It provides a backup for OEM systems and is something that will not be at risk of being taken offline by a third-party. The tracker is provisioned directly, by a contractual arrangement between the consumer and the service provider. It is a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) product and is not dependent on the future status of behind-the-scenes Business-to-Business (B2B) arrangements. This can provide users with greater peace of mind. A battery-powered LPWA tracker can be hidden anywhere, not just where thieves already know that OEMs install trackers, and without being disabled if a vehicle’s battery is disconnected or as easily blocked if it is hidden away after being stolen.

GPS is easily defeated by obscuring Line-of-Sight (LoS), but an active cellular connection can continue to report the most recent GPS coordinates for a long time long afterward and is able to be independently located through cellular triangulation. Furthermore, just because a technology is lower in cost does mean that it is lower in value. The purpose of any IoT connection, asset trackers included, is the value of the outcome they ideally guarantee. While the Price Per Unit (PPU) of Invoxia’s GPS Tracker seems high for an off-the-shelf consumer electronics item, if it allows valuable lost luggage or a stolen vehicle to be recovered, it will be worth it. Device OEMs and service providers looking to sell into the consumer IoT space must remember this and value their enabling technology based on what it can do rather than what it costs (the great difficulty of course being how to prove to consumers that they should try it in the first place). All products that provide insurance are purchased grudgingly as something consumers would never choose to have to use.

If device OEMs price an item like a tracker too highly then consumers will, for better or worse, take the risk of not buying one. But if OEMs price purportedly “smart” technology too cheaply, consumers will not believe it is genuinely effective. Personal trackers may sell best when sold in the same stores as the items they are typically used to protect, as an impulse purchase and as an add-on to secure a new investment. It would only take each person with a smartphone to decide to have just one tracker to monitor whatever item they value the most for this market to skyrocket. As trackers are not tied to a particular asset, consumers can switch them between different items at will, and may even leave them dormant for periods of time to be reactivated with top-up connectivity via an app when they are needed again. Versatility is a strength, yet a lack of a specific use can be a weakness. Nevertheless, it is likely most people can think of at least one item, at any given moment in time, that they absolutely would not want to lose.