Published Date : 2025-Mar-20
The Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) Market is set to witness exponential growth by 2025, driven by the increasing adoption of IoT (Internet of Things), smart cities, industrial automation, and remote monitoring applications. LPWAN technologies like LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, Sigfox, and LTE-M enable long-range, low-power connectivity for billions of devices worldwide.
In this blog, we explore the top companies leading the LPWAN market in 2025.
Compared to traditional cellular networks, a low power wide area network, or LPWAN, is a wireless network that connects devices at farther distances and at lower rates. The four most well-known LPWAN technologies are LoRa, Sigfox, Ingenu, and Weightless. Since LPWANs use a license-exempt spectrum, they cost less to implement compared to Wi-Fi and cellular networks. With the use of a license-exempt spectrum is the ability to achieve a higher range and lower data rates.
The market for low power wide area network is expected to experience a high growth over this forecasting period since LPWANs are perfectly well-suited to connect smart meters, environmental sensors, or other devices that collect data silently over months or years while providing large area coverage. Whereas the rest of the LPWAN technologies utilize frequency-division multiple access (FDMA), LoRa utilizes time-division duplexing (TDD). Message size is usually limited to 128 bytes due to cost of protocol. But with this scale, it can send small amounts of data, like temperature sensor values, presence sensing, and location information. They are low in cost as well, use passive sensors to conserve power, and are internet-capable, which is expected to fuel the low power wide area network market growth even more.
Low power wide area network business is gaining speed, but it can remain a non-profitable business. The list of companies that produce such networks grows daily. There are more than 30 different companies selling/marketing their own type of LPWAN technology.
Senet, Inc., Weightless SIG, NWave Technologies, Semtech Corporation, SIGFOX, LORIOT, WAVIoT, Ingenu, Actility, and Link Labs are a few of the major players in the low power wide area network industry.
1) Growing number of internet users: In 2016, over 5.4 billion people were online globally, and there are already 6.3 billion smartphone users worldwide, and that figure is rising daily.
This indicates that demand for low power wide area network market is on the rise due to connectivity provided by LoRa and Sigfox networks.
2) Growth in number of devices with connectivity: Right now, there are 27 billion IoT devices in use that range from smart TVs, meters, cars to sensors and others. Thus, over the last few years, the low power wide area network market has seen growth as smartphones have become very common and as more and more IoT devices get connected.
3) Integration of LPWAN technology with cloud computing: The cloud computing market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 16% during the forecast period, and its valuation for 2021 is USD 445 billion. This implies that the market for low power wide area networks is increasing due to the adoption of technology by cloud computing, which aids various industries like energy management, smart metering, healthcare, and transportation and logistics.
4) High degree of security: Low power wide area networks are preferred over other technologies for managing key, time-dependent data due to their high degree of security aspects. For instance, users can see a real-time encrypted stream of data in any authorized device via web browser or specialized Android smartphone application once they have enrolled into their account. Additionally, several encryption options are offered by companies such as Nokia, such as application-layer encryption and over-the-air authentication.
5) Lower cost: Low power wide area network (LPWAN) provides more coverage at lower prices than other LPWAN standards. For instance, in the European low power wide area network market, Sigfox provides its subscribers with free service, enabling them to use the whole country after paying an initial equipment fee. LoRa networks, on the other hand, charge users fixed monthly fees per gateway, depending on the data volume plan that users select, among other considerations.
Low power wide area networks are increasingly needed as the world has more internet users, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and connected devices. More than 6.3 billion smartphones are already in use globally, and by 2025, there will be 41 billion IoT device users, compared to 8.1 billion in 2016. In addition, over 27 billion IoT devices such as smart TVs, meters, cars, sensors, and others will be in use by 2020. Low power wide area networks are increasingly becoming a necessity globally due to their high degree of security and reliability features at a lower price compared to other LPWAN standards.
In the global low power wide area network market, some of the most popular and well-known LPWAN technologies are LoRa and Sigfox. While Asia Pacific has also emerged as one of the prominent low power wide area network markets since the usage of IoT is being observed both from the consumer and the industrial side. The need for low power wide area networks is also being driven globally by an increase in the number of telecommunication service providers and a rise in the subscriber base in the Asia Pacific. But lack of awareness among the users about low power wide area networks has slowed down the market growth to a certain extent so far. Nevertheless, with the recent progress that has led to expansion in the number of IoT devices, LPWAN integration is expected to skyrocket soon.
To meet the growing needs, many of the players in the low power wide area network market have launched low power wide area networks for global consumers which include Nokia and Alvarion Ltd to mention a few. These companies are extending their internal strength by offering solutions in various sectors like energy management, smart metering, healthcare, and logistics and transport.
LPWAN can support all manner of application use cases such as outdoor logistics, home automation (remote heating controls for homes, light control in gardens, etc.), but they are particularly suitable for asset tracking applications. They can also be used for grid edge device supply, smart metering, and green monitoring.
Yet, smart farming and the application of devices within industrial plant environments, where most assets must be fitted with sensors, are the two applications of asset tracking driving the global low power wide area network market. It has been found that most end customers use LPWA networks to monitor products across their supply chains. The best-known use cases for GSM-based M2M communication are already implemented, for example, using GPS functionality integrated into tablets or smartphones. The devices are mounted on the goods that need to be monitored (like port gear, trailers, or containers) and report information regarding their locations periodically through cellular network connections. Besides this, the expense of these solutions for real-time tracking is expensive because of relatively low throughput and limited battery life.
Aside from this, low power wide area network market is driven by excessive use of LPWAN in farms or manufacturing plants across the globe since traditional M2M communication technologies lack an ideal solution. For instance, a cow will begin consuming his crop if a farmer would want to be aware so that he can be preventive. In the same vein, for oil rigs or vessels, there would be a need to track equipment humidity, pump faults, and other operations that take place in harsh conditions. All the valuable assets in a particular area may be tracked with the necessary accuracy through LPWA networks based on long-range protocols like LoRaWAN.
By and large, any company that desires to control many assets across wide distances without incurring expensive infrastructures and complicated installations can greatly benefit from applying LPWAN devices in asset tracking. According to our research, increasing number of companies are using the LPWAN solution to save tens of thousands of dollars on their employee's benefits through remote asset tracking devices that run on LPWA networks and increase the value of the global low power wide area network market.
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