The Landing of Wide Area Networks Such As NB IOT and Lora Is Accompanied by the Prominent Long Tail Effect

A long "tail" of the Internet of things will be pulled longer by low-power wide area networks such as NB IOT and Lora. We need high standardization and data services to realize long tail operation.As a typical feature of network economy, "long tail effect" provides a better perspective for the development of Internet and mobile Internet industry; In the era of Internet of things, due to the integration of Internet of things and all walks of life of the national economy, the long tail effect is more obvious. In my opinion, with the commercial implementation of low-power wide area networks such as NB IOT and lorawan, the "long tail" part is constantly being stretched, bringing opportunities for intelligent transformation to a large number of diversified terminals.In the diversified Internet of things world, the long tail effect is more prominent

Technology industry practitioners must be familiar with the "long tail effect". In 2004, Chris Anderson, editor in chief of wired, a well-known Silicon Valley magazine, first put forward the "long tail theory": the protruding part from the middle of the normal distribution curve is called "head"; The relatively flat part on both sides is called "tail". From the perspective of people's demand, most of the demand is concentrated in the head, while the demand distributed in the tail is personalized, scattered and small demand, and this part of differentiated and small demand will form a long "tail" on the demand curve.

The long tail effect is more prominent in industries with network economy. We are familiar with cases such as Google Advertising for a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises at ultra-low prices, and a large number of non bestsellers of Amazon reaching 50% of the total revenue. Undoubtedly, the characteristics of the network economy of the Internet of things are also very obvious, that is, the value of the whole network increases with the increase of the number of access terminals. Why is the long tail effect in the Internet of things industry more prominent? We can examine it from the perspective of terminal and application ecology.

From the perspective of terminals, the terminals of the Internet of things show very obvious diversified characteristics, forming a large number of personalized "tail" Internet of things terminal forms. In the previous era of mobile Internet, the terminals faced by mobile Internet are mass mobile phones and tablets. In the era of Internet of things, we can't find terminals of the same magnitude as mobile phones. Devices in various industries become "intelligent interconnected products" after being connected to the network, but terminals in various industries are different. Although there are some homogeneous terminals due to the characteristics of some industries, they cannot be called mass terminals compared with 10 billion level networked devices in the future. Liu Gang, general manager of Intel's online business department in China, once pointed out in the article "how to use the long tail theory to support intelligent hardware innovation?" that the long tail of Internet of things / intelligent hardware actually represents no small market opportunity. It seems that the number of each field is not large, but when these long tails are added together, the total market capacity and market opportunity are actually very large. The approximate long tail state can be seen from the following figure:

The diversification of terminals forms a diversified demand for Internet of things applications, which is a more diversified demand form than mobile Internet. In the development of mobile Internet, people can produce rich applications on mass mobile phones and tablet terminals, forming a very typical long tail shape; In the development of the Internet of things, the diversification of terminals will not only give birth to richer applications than the mobile Internet, but also enrich the application part of the long tail.In summary, due to the sharp increase and diversification of the number of terminals accessing the network, the long tail form of terminals is formed; The applications running on diversified terminals are more abundant, and the long tail of Internet of things applications is further extended.Connect more fragmented applications and stretch the long tail of low-power Wan

When low-power WAN technologies such as NB IOT and Lora are gradually commercialized, they complement the short board of the communication layer of the Internet of things and make the equipment access more convenient. The direct impact is to diversify the terminals and further extend the long tail.

Why does the low-power Wan extend the long tail of the Internet of things? After the commercial use of low-power wide area network, it solves the data transmission problems of meter reading, sensor connection and other applications. At the same time, it also gives a large number of insignificant devices the opportunity to access the network, such as fire extinguishers in buildings, meteorological monitoring equipment in remote areas, fire alarm equipment in vast forests, etc. the magnitude of these devices is not large, but the data generated by them are widely used in people's production and life Scientific research and other activities. Therefore, from the perspective of the number of terminals, when NB IOT and Lora networks are deployed, there are more types of terminals that can realize network access, but the magnitude of most terminals is not large, and the characteristics of type diversification and small scale contribute to a longer "tail" shape of the Internet of things industry than before.

A large number of "insignificant" terminals access the network, extend the long tail of the terminal, and bring a more fragmented application form, that is, on a large number of terminals, but each type of terminals has a small order of magnitude, they form different applications. It can be said that low-power Wan makes more fragmented applications possible and makes the long tail effect more obvious.Value from breaking up, standardization and data services

The existence of the long tail effect and the operation of the long tail has always been one of the focuses of people's attention. Most of the attention is focused on the "head", because the "head" often brings half the income; However, if we can effectively integrate the "tail" group, we can get the other half of the income and avoid fierce competition. In the market of Internet of things, terminals and applications in the long tail are scattered in all walks of life. How to "break up parts into whole" to realize the long tail operation? For low-power Wan, standardization and data services will bring value.

At present, there are hundreds of schools of thought competing for low-power WAN technology. In the article "ending the hundred schools of thought competing for low-power WAN technology and taking the path of WiFi cultivation", Dr. Wu Shuangli proposed that referring to the mature WiFi development path, a high degree of standardization will be a necessary condition for the success of low-power WAN technology in business. In the face of a large number of long tail terminals, under the background of high standardization, the interconnection between them is easier to achieve. As a wide area network, only a small number of technical standards will eventually go to large-scale commerce in the future, and the commercial networks built by a small number of technical standards must be complementary and have interconnection mechanism, so as to make the operation of long tail terminals and applications possible.

When the extended long tail part is connected to the network, the connection value is only the primary value when the device is connected to the network. Network as a service has become an important business model for the current low-power Wan solution manufacturers. The solution manufacturers have end-to-end (terminal to cloud) service capabilities. If we further tap the value of the data behind these long tail terminals and applications and provide corresponding services, It is not only a method to integrate scattered terminals and applications, but also the operation of the long tail of the Internet of things.