What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
The Future of IoT: Achieving 100% Global Connectivity
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
The promise of connecting "everything" to the internet has remained frustratingly out of reach for over a decade. Despite bold predictions of 50 billion connected devices by 2020, the industry achieved just 11 billion – a mere 20% of expectations. Why? As Nick Earle of Eseye, explains, we dramatically underestimated the complexity of creating truly global connectivity.
This conversation unveils the missing piece that's finally enabling the Internet of Things to deliver on its potential: ubiquitous connectivity that works everywhere, every time. Drawing from his experience leading global tech giants and now Eseye, Nick reveals how the traditional carrier model was fundamentally misaligned with IoT's needs – and how his company's revolutionary "federation" approach, similar to the airline industry's Star Alliance, is changing everything.
What makes this discussion particularly compelling is the real-world impact. Global brands like Amazon, Shell, and Coca-Cola are already leveraging Eseye's technology to deploy single-product SKUs worldwide, transforming their manufacturing, supply chains, and business models. The ROI isn't coming from the data itself, but from the operational efficiencies of building once and deploying anywhere – delivering 100-500x returns over connectivity costs.
Beyond the technology, Nick offers a fascinating perspective on what he calls the "third wave of tech disruption" in telecommunications, where eSIM technology and new standards are breaking the 40-year carrier lock on connectivity. For business leaders contemplating IoT strategies, this provides crucial context on why previous attempts may have faltered and how the landscape has fundamentally changed.
Whether you're leading a global enterprise or a nimble startup, this episode illuminates how the barriers to IoT adoption are finally falling away, making connected product deployment more accessible and scalable than ever before. The future where devices intelligently choose their own best connectivity method – be it cellular, satellite, or something else – is closer than you might think.
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Hey everyone, fascinating discussion today as we dive into the Internet of Things. And what is the third wave of tech disruption being led by a company called SI Nick? How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great, Evan, Very nice to meet you and hello everyone who's watching.
Speaker 1:Great to see you. Summer is here for the UK and Boston here in the Northeast, so really enjoying this time. Before we talk about SI, maybe introduce yourself the company, the mission, the vision. What are we looking at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so SI is a privately held company. We're based in the UK, although we are global. We have customers all the way around the world. We we do some of the biggest companies in the world, like amazon's, uh, iot, we do shells, iot, bps, iot, uh, coca-cola's vending machines, mars vending machines, um, and we basically deliver uh. The elevator pitch, if you like, is um, and we can go into how we do it. We deliver a hundred percent connectivity uh globally, um and so um. We basically compete on the basis that we actually get you to 99 plus connectivity from a single product skew uh in a device and that's why we've won these really big accounts and how increasingly we're working with operators. But we can go into that a bit later on.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So let's set the scene. I mean IoT has been around longer than Wi-Fi, longer than most wireless technologies, and yet it's really coming into force now. Why has it taken so long to finally take off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, it has. I mean, I've been in the industry a while it's not my first rodeo and I remember I was at Cisco for 13 years and ended up as part of the exec team, and I remember, in 2011, we confidently predicted there'd be 20, sorry, 50 billion things connected by 2020. And never thinking that I'd be able to comment post 2020 and look back and see how accurate that was, we actually got to 11 billion as an industry and so you know, even before it was called iot, it was called m2m and you could argue, before that it was called scada, and you know we we only got to 20 of predictions and and that therein lies the lies, the rub, um, in that we kind of assumed that it would be easy, and I think we had a mental model. I know we had a mental model in our mind that says, well, we can do it on a phone. I mean, I can take my phone Remember 2007, the iPhone. I can take my phone abroad and it roams, it works right.
Speaker 2:So it's just a device with a circuit and software, and we thought IoT would be the same. And, of course, so isn't it? Just a device with a circuit and software and we thought IoT would be the same, and of course it isn't. And then what we found is that, oh, it's actually. You know, there's roaming agreements, but only some roaming agreements. I mean, in general, the average connectivity is 85% globally and what that means is that if you want to create a single product, manufacture it once and just send it around the world and have it connect what we call ubiquitous connectivity you're going to get 85% on average. And what that means is, let's say you're doing a healthcare use case or whatever, you've got 15% of cases where you're not having connectivity and then roaming agreements break.
Speaker 2:So we've missed, as an industry, we've completely missed expectations. We totally underestimated the complexity. We basically my analogy is we sold, you know parts, like selling parts of a car and assume the customers would assemble the car themselves a car and assumed the customers would assemble the car themselves. And actually, at the heart of my company and the founders who started it before I joined, the brilliance of it was that they designed something which said that will never work. You cannot glue proprietary systems together and get 100% connectivity. So they said we have to build a different model, and that was the genesis of SI, by the way, evan. Interestingly enough, these guys the founders. They created Zigbee.
Speaker 2:So you know, we all know, it's in your remote control, about 5 billion devices. But that is ubiquitous connectivity your TV remote. Should you ever decide to travel with it around the world? If you ever wanted to do that, it would work on every TV. Decide to travel with it around the world? If you ever wanted to do that, it would work on every tv. Um, you know, zigbee is ubiquitous connectivity from a chip on a board inside a device. So they basically said why don't we reinvent cellular and design a cellular solution that works like zigbee? And uh, essentially we. That's what we do. We sell 99, 99% plus global connectivity. You know, 192 countries in the world. It's quite a challenge and that's why we've won those big brands that I mentioned.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. You've also called this period we're in the third wave of tech disruption. What does that mean exactly in simpler terms, for business leaders, tech leaders? What's? So unique about the present time.
Speaker 2:You know, I have been in the industry for 40 years and I think you can learn a lot from what's happened, because there's really nothing new. So I'll talk about the first and the second ways of disruption and I'll do it from my own perspective because it was there. I remember when I first joined Cisco. It was just around the time when voice over IP was coming in as a new technology to replace circuit switch. And what people forget when they look back is people, a lot of people were really skeptical oh, it's just tech, it's not. You know, I'm going to carry on selling circuit switch.
Speaker 2:Well, we all know what happened. The guys who adopted packet switching leapfrogged and got the market, took the early lead and the pecking order changed. And so disruption is is difficult because you have to do change management and it's threatening. It threatens your economic model. We call that the first wave of disruption for telecom economic model. We call that the first wave of disruption for telecom. The second wave, just before I left Cisco, was cloud. I ended up for Cisco running the cloud program globally and it was all about the fact that the service providers at the time they all had hosted data center businesses, so large part of their business. Um wasn't just selling data uh data, voice video into consumer handsets and things like that, but they all they were hosting enterprises applications on data centers. That was big for most telcos. Well, of course, aws came along, where you know, for ten dollars a week on your own personal credit card you had access to a huge compute and all the developer tools. That business just collapsed, it was hollowed out and they all had to scramble and do it. And so the question then becomes okay, you know, technology enabled disruption.
Speaker 2:What's happening now and I believe many people do that we're now actually seeing the third wave of disruption in telecom, which is, as always, these disruptions are enabled by a new standard, uh and into a better interoperability. In the case of iot, it's the e-sim which breaks, breaks the 40-year proprietary lock of the telecom mz into the sim, so you can now have multiple operators in the sim. It's the euicc standard which makes it an official standard so everyone can interoperate. And then there's this new um capability called sgp32, without getting too technical about it, but basically gives control to the user, and the user can say I, you, the, the operator used to control the switch, chose the roaming agreements, you know your way or the highway, but I press the button, I'm actually going to go to somewhere else.
Speaker 2:So all of that is disruption, and with disruption comes opportunity. I believe is a same thing is that a number of operators are now seeing this as an opportunity for them to become global, and a bunch of operators are sitting and watching it wondering is this going to affect them. But I absolutely believe disruption is underway and this is an opportunity, which is one of the reasons why we aren't just selling to large enterprises. We now. We are now the platform for AT&T globally. That was a big announcement we did in Barcelona. So AT&T have 135 million devices. So we have become the platform for AT&T, the white label platform.
Speaker 2:We are doing the platform for TELUS in Canada and we are doing the platform for MTN across 18 countries in Africa. So we are working with operators to enable them to take advantage of this disruption so they can become global with a SaaS solution as opposed to building it themselves, which is their DNA, but all their money is going into 5G, so they don't have any money to build it themselves. They don't have the time because this disruption comes at you really quickly. So, yeah, we're still doing direct big enterprises, you know giving you some brands, but now most of our activity is white labeling, like AT&T, and we expect more to follow. We're helping the operators manage the disruption so that they can launch a new service as an off-balance sheet pay-as-you-use service very rapidly to take advantage of the next wave of disruption, which is a huge opportunity for people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a time. And you mentioned those amazing brands, those big enterprises. How are they using connected devices and data today? Compared to just five years ago, for example, what's changed?
Speaker 2:single product SKUs. So I think one of the misunderstandings about IoT is that the ROI is at the front end, ie the device. You can get data out of the device and therefore you will get more marketing data or you'll sell more devices. Actually, I don't think that is the ROI for IoT. The ROI for IoT is the ability to make a single product in a single factory with ubiquitous connectivity inside it and deploy it anywhere in the world and it just works. So, to give you specific examples, we do all of Shell's EV chargers right, and Shell make them in Vietnam and they make them once as a sealed device. It's not an open device where you insert SIMs. When it gets to the country, make it once, ship it around the world, turn it on and it works.
Speaker 2:The ROI for only having one line of EV chargers, for having simpler manufacturing, simpler supply chain, simpler installation, simpler maintenance. One portal, one set of APIs, is 100, if not 500 times more return on investment than the cost of the connectivity, because remember, data is getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. When I joined SI seven years ago, the cost of a gigabyte of data was about $11. The market price for a gigabyte of IoT data now is about $1.60, right. So that's about a 25% decline per year. So the money's not in the data anymore.
Speaker 2:The ROI is that can you save money at your backend costs by manufacturing single SKU? So, amazon, we do Amazon automatic door openers for all the Amazon Prime trucks around the world. It's a single device that you can put inside the buzzer of an apartment block where you get entry. That will work and they can put it in any door in the world. I do it in my own podcast called IoT Leaders, and one of the episodes is Amazon. They talk about owning every door in the world. Amazon don't do small projects so that the prime driver can gain secure access and other companies like FedEx, ups or whatever can use it, because you don't want two devices or three devices in your door. So the answer to the question is people are now making single global product SKUs which will work anywhere in the world. Now, in order to do that, you have to have a different model to the classic MNO, mvna, mvno model, because it cannot do that. The standard MNO model was not built to do ubiquitous global connectivity, and so that's really the heart of why we're different.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So you've solved the interoperability challenge and you're leveraging all this new technology like eSIM. The other barriers traditionally have been security, terrible device security, questions around cloud security, privacy concerns. How are you addressing those concerns?
Speaker 2:So maybe I'll answer that, linking to the previous question. So one of the differences our architecture is basically it's kind of similar to the Star Alliance in the airline industry in that we have a ring architecture, not a hub and spoke, and we have 25 operators that we can localize the connection OTA so we can actually either roam onto those 25 operators on all of their roaming agreements so that makes 900 networks or we can localize the connection OTA so we can switch a device from AT&T to Verizon in the US and localize, not just run, and that's really important, especially for 5G that gets going. Now, on security, everything is encrypted and through a private APN, and I mentioned SGP32 earlier. Some of your listeners, viewers, will be very familiar with that. But the idea of switching the operator yourself, like your Kindle does or your Apple Watch does, the problem is take one example is yeah, but how do you switch the APN? I mean the APN is different by operator. If it's fixed IP addresses, the IP address is different. So what we use is a private APN and fully encrypted data. We don't store any data. It's all data in motion, data at rest, and we use a public-private key encryption at the device level to make sure that you've got auditability, traceability and proof of provenance of the data, ie it's not been intercepted from the device to your cloud portal. So security and trust is becoming a really big part of this. And using the public internet to get your data, it's very hard to actually get that trust component. So that's why we have our own private software defined network with 20 data centers and we use encrypted APNs across 25 operators. It's like the Star Alliance.
Speaker 2:Buy an airline ticket from Unitedcom. You can fly on 34 airlines. You'll get United points, use United lounges and pay once to United, but you can fly on 34 airlines. That business model which we are now used to but used to be revolutionary. That business model is what we've built, if you like, for IoT. That business model is what we've built, if you like, for IoT. So AT&T now have a global solution called AT's Global Sim Advance, they call it. You can buy a global solution from AT&T and it will work across 25 operators all the way around the world either roaming or localization but it's all sold to you by AT&T. That's the first time they've ever been able to do that, because for their entire history, all AT&T have been able to do is sell you AT&T connectivity and roaming where they have it. So it's a new model based on collaboration between operators, like the Star Alliance, which is a proven business model, and there's multiple like Visa, in financial services. It's similar.
Speaker 2:You have to be abstracted and be agnostic and virtualize your switch in the cloud to provide ubiquitous global connectivity. That's a lot of big words, but essentially what it means is that you have to enable an operator to actually sell competitors' connectivity through their brand and the IoT industry and the traditional legacy platforms like Cisco Jasper that I'm very familiar with, or Ericsson's platform. They were never built to do that. They don't do what's called eSIM orchestration.
Speaker 2:So this is the disruptive effect is that a few operators I mentioned three have made the move and they've said I want to be a global leader like Telus. Telus aren't even the biggest operator in Canada right, they're the second biggest but Telus can sell a single eSIM and connect a device in 192 countries and they do that with a software platform. So they've made the leap to the new world and I think this is the disruption that's going to be played out over the next few years. It's great for customers because you get the single product SKU and you get the ROI and you get the connectivity. You don't have to worry about it. It's just ubiquitous, it just works as we describe it.
Speaker 1:No, that's fantastic and it's a missing piece of the puzzle. However, I would say you know the telcos carriers. We love them, but they traditionally haven't necessarily been, you know, like a consultative sort of solution, architecture-led sale. So if you're an enterprise CEO, cio, starting an IoT journey maybe you have a hospital network or fleet or you know who knows the business how do you advise them, yeah, to execute on an IoT strategy, transformation strategy. What's the first step that you've seen leading to success, and how can they be successful in leveraging this technology from?
Speaker 2:the telco. Yeah, from the telco. Yeah, that was the important bit at the end, because we still sell direct, but increasingly we're becoming the Jasper of the operators In the deal with. Let's take AT&T in the deal with AT&T, we are actually, we work alongside them and empower them. So every prospect that AT&T get, they introduce us to the prospect, and the reason they do that is because of what you just said. This is not what they're used to. I mean, they're used to simpson data and they're really good at it 135 million connections, simpson data. Now you start talking about a solution. You're talking about architecture, design. You're talking about firmware optimization in the device, which no one's ever had to think about. You're talking about project management and implementation. So we augment. One of our services isn't just the SaaS platform, but it's the empowerment channel empowerment, augmenting the operator to lead them through, to teach them how to fish. So eventually we're not needed.
Speaker 2:I always like to say there's nothing new At Cisco. When I left 2017, it was a $50 billion company, I think, but you know they did 80% indirect and 20% direct. But a large part of Cisco's channel business the 80% was empowering the channel to actually give solutions and value so they could move up, could move up the stack. And when you look at 5g and and you know they're almost a billion dollars that the networks are now spending on implementing 5g stacks one of the reasons they're doing 5g is not because it's just another g, it's somebody said to me the other day it's because and it's not just because of speed 5g the way it's architected, and 5g sa, the standalone um. It's because and it's not just because of speed ig the way it's architected, and 5gsa, the standalone um. It gives them an opportunity to create, to move up the stack of value-added services. You know network slicing, qos, latency, but also a lot more than that. Uh, you can actually do device management as a service, as a battery management, uh, multi-rat.
Speaker 2:The operators all want to be able to move up the stack because the data price is going down and so we're working with them to help them to be a solution seller so they can increase their ARPU, because they have to because of the data price decline. So it isn't just a SaaS buy our SaaS and good luck. We're involved in every single AT&T sale. We're involved in all the TELUS sales. We're on with MTN. I mean we're doing there's 18 different opcos across Africa in MTN, so it's kind of like 18 service providers.
Speaker 2:So you have to be a solutions company in the first place. It's not just a mvno that does multi-mc. So there is change management and that's the most difficult part, which is why it will take multi-years for this to roll out. But the direction I don't think is in doubt. The direction is what we are betting on the mno's, who today do 80%, 85% of all connections globally, and we just need to enable them to do this. There are some companies who believe the M&Os won't make this transition. We think no, no, no, they will, because they have the assets, they have the pipes, they have the brand, but they just need some help. And so it's not just software, it's also empowering them to do solution selling.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, and so you know, oftentimes large enterprises are the leaders. Do you think smaller companies, smes or startups can take advantage of IoT, or is this more of a big enterprise?
Speaker 2:No, it's not a big enterprise thing and in fact I mean we have 800 customers as SI, of which, for instance, at&t is one. But we were a direct-only company for about 14 years and the advantage that small companies have is they can move quickly. Large companies are like, you know, the ocean liner. It takes a long time for them. Small companies are like the speedboat.
Speaker 2:And the question is the problem with IoT, the adoption. You know, we promised 50 billion. We got to 11 billion. It was because of the complexity, the proprietary components. You had to build it yourself.
Speaker 2:If you can package it in a way that's frictionless and easy to absorb and you switch it on, then then small companies can absolutely take advantage of it. Let me give you an example Fixed wireless access. Most small companies have a router, as you call it over there. Having lived and worked in the US, I'll use that language. They have a router, but that router connects to the service provider, but the service provider can't do 100% domestic coverage. So in the US, at&t doesn't have an IoT roaming agreement with either Verizon or Timo, so it's not even national coverage, right, never mind global.
Speaker 2:The federation approach, which is how we describe our model, solves that. But if you could take it and it's enabled by the SIM, the tiny little eSIM 4 millimeters by 4 millimeters chip that's on the board. If you put the SIM in the router and the SIM then connects to the cloud platform. Sim in the router, um and the sim then connects to the cloud platform, the router becomes a hundred percent connectivity. Um uh device that doesn't need an ethernet cable in um, it's a standalone device that gives a hundred percent um wireless access and that's a huge opportunity for smbs. And the same concept um is. You know, if you put the SIM in a device, it could be a tracker, it could be a medical device, something you wear around your neck, it could be a watch we do Google Watch in Canada If you put the SIM in the device on the board. So you have to delay a bit. It isn't just plug a plastic SIM in, so you have to put the.
Speaker 2:SIM in the device and we help optimize the firmware because we're also a hardware company. But once you've got that, then actually you can get products to market really quick and sell them globally. And the people who tend to take advantage of that are the smaller companies. Typically that's what happens. It's the smaller companies who get to market quickly with a new innovative solution. That puts pressure on the big companies to react, as we were saying earlier about the operators. So I think for SMBs, solutions like fixed wireless or the ability to create a new product with 100% connectivity and if you're a US company, say well, I won't just sell it in the US, but I'll sell it in Mexico, maybe Latam, I'll sell it in Canada and I'll sign up a distributor in Europe, in Asia, and I just know that I don't have to worry about who it's going to connect to. It's kind of the Zigbee thing. Right, it's just if we sell, our SLA service level agreement is 99% plus connectivity and that's hard to do behind the scenes. But if you can do it because you've architected the solution at least in our case the way we have then people say, okay, great, I can concentrate on my business because now I've got iot the way I've always wanted it, which is how amazon, you know, talk about Customers, talk about it on my podcast is that I actually now can like one last example, if I can.
Speaker 2:We do Coca-Cola have a brand called Costa, which is a big coffee chain. It's particularly strong in Europe and in Australia. We do all the coffee machines for Coca-Cola. So you think about it, you've which, that's a costa and uh, I think starbucks. Right, costa coffee coffee machines are in garages, um and uh convenience stores all around europe and asia or middle east. Starbucks are the big 800 pound gorilla. It takes starbucks about three months, if they want to enter into a new country, to find a site, build the store, train the staff, fit it out, start selling the first cup of coffee and then when you walk into the store, they ask you what your name is. You say evan, they write it with a sharpie on the side of a cup and you walk out. At that point they haven't a clue who you are because you paid. If you paid with a card, they don't get the personal data from the finance company.
Speaker 2:Costa have one product SKU which contains our technology. They can put that product SKU in a BP garage, say in Vietnam I'm going to use Vietnam again they can put it in the BP garage in Vietnam, turn it on and the same day it connects Wow, it connects the same day, it connects, wow, it connects the same day. So they have business agility. The garage pays for electricity, the garage has to put the milk in, the garage has to top up the coffee and then the garage just has to send money to Costa. If the Vietnamese market doesn't like Costa coffee, they switch the machine off and take it out. It's one square meter footprint and because you scan your QR code, you're getting loyalty points. But what they're getting is your identity, so they know your coffee buying habits, so they can send you messages saying Evan, it's 11 o'clock, you haven't had your frappuccino yet, or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:So the benefits of single product, sku, business agility, make it once, deploy it anywhere are very significant. You know they see it as almost like a Starbucks killer because it can take a long time. But that's why Coca-Cola bought them, and so they are deploying coffee machines all over the world. There's a big one in Atlanta Airport, directly opposite of Starbucks, because people are in the line at Starbucks. It's taking a long time, they're rushing for the flight. The other side of the corridor is the big coffee custom machine. It's called a barista bot, but the point is, this is a new business model and it enables the enterprises to compete with other enterprises, and it's because they can get to market quickly, manufacture it once, deploy it quickly and get the data, and so we see a ton of use cases like this. But at the heart of it is eSIM, euicc and the ability to create single global product SKU, which is what we promised in 2011, but we never delivered.
Speaker 1:Wow, incredible. So you're so far ahead of the curve here. I almost dare not ask where you see IT going next, because you're sort of living in the future, I mean how do you stay ahead of the curve here, as things will keep evolving inevitably?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I think we're doing a few great things, but we're not doing everything great. Let me just pour a bit of cold water on that, although the brands that I said you know we're only a small company the brands that I said do give credibility to the story In terms of where it goes. Next, I think that there is a. What we've done so far as an industry is that we've. We've now seen the dawn of operator agnostic connectivity. I want to let Star Alliance. I want to fly on any airline. So there's a thing in the middle. It's a tech company actually called Star Alliance. It's a tech company and a brand. So we're trying to be the Star Alliance of the global MNOs and we still sell direct.
Speaker 2:Now, cellular is only 13%. We all get obsessed about cellular. It's only 13% of all connections. So satellite as an example, in rural areas where there aren't towers, satellite is going to be the dominant model and there's a lot happening in satellite. The Costa coffee machines will say if they're in a BP garage, if Wi-Fi is available, then use that. If not, use cellular. So what you actually want is the devices to be multi-RAT agnostic. If the device was operator agnostic and provider of multi-RAT agnostic and had the intelligence to say to sense it, so only switch to another RAT radio access type. If signal strength is this and latency is that, then what you get is the device chooses the connectivity.
Speaker 2:Historically, historically, we started off with the industry. The operator chose the connectivity because they control the switch. So it's my, I'm an operator, you connect to my network with the sim that's in your device and it's either my network or my roaming agreements. And then the mvnos came out and said well, we're set above that, we control the switch, which may be for two or three operators. What's actually happening now is that you get operator agnosticity, which is a real word, and you get rat radio access type choices. So the intelligence, like it did in client server I mean we always say it's new, it's not new really, client-server. You have the logic and the data in the three-tier or five-tier server model, but there was intelligence in the device. So we believe that ultimately the device is going to choose the connectivity. So in 5G, if you want a certain level of quality service and a certain level of network slicing, the device has to say this is what I need for the use case and the cloud platform has to say I'll only switch you to another provider who can provide those levels of service. So that's from the device in or the edge in if, like the historical model, is from the providers out.
Speaker 2:So where we we see it going is in order to get massive iot people have been talking about that 500 million devices, any sensors, satellites a great example. You know you tiny centers that run sensors that run off a couple of aa batteries. I mean 10 years off a couple of aa batteries. It's amazing what people are talking about. You know you can print. You can talking about you can print a battery and put it on something and stick it in a field.
Speaker 2:In order to get massive IoT, hundreds of billions of devices you've got to take these barriers away, like operator agnosticity. You've got take all the propriety stacks out and you will need rat. You know, if cellular, then use it. If the price is okay, use, use, um, uh, laura. If not, use cellular, but only if this. So the logic moves to the edge. We took about 80 of applications and data are going to the edge. Iot is a great example. The logic. Logic goes to the edge and the edge drives the center drives the switching and that's how you get 500 billion things.
Speaker 2:But you'll only get that sort of adoption if the enterprises say I make one, deploy everywhere.
Speaker 2:And you see, in car companies car companies want to make.
Speaker 2:You know all the car companies, the width of all the cars are the same because they make one frame and all the models just put different top parts. It's different right? Common manufacturing, common components, global distribution these are the economics of growth in manufacturing and they need to be applied to IoT. And if you can create global single SKU and then bring the price down and the logic down to software in the microcontroller actually in the device or in the processor of the device, if you can put the switch in there and keep the price down so, for instance, it can select satellite if it's a little sensor in a wheat field in Ohio Then you can actually get massive IoT, which is what we really want, as opposed to what we've got right now, which is partial IoT. I think the latest data is 18 billion IoT devices at the end of last year. It sounds a lot but it isn't compared to the potential that's out there, and so you've got to get frictionless, open, interoperable capabilities to get the inflection point of adoption.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's quite a mic drop moment. So I think on that note we have some food for thought, but really amazing and interesting work. Congratulations, and onwards and upwards with the third wave. Congratulations, Nick.
Speaker 2:Thanks, evan, good to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Likewise, thanks for joining, thanks for listening and watching everyone Take care.