5G market growth is being driven by new mobile device subscriptions and increased support for a diversified set of 5G IoT use cases. According to Allied Market Research, “the global 5G technology market was valued at $5.13 billion in 2020, and is projected to reach $797.80 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 65.8% from 2021 to 2030.” Faster network speeds and increased capacity have improved the performance of applications that used to run on 4G, and at the same time helped pave the way for new application and technology advancements.

The 5G commercial rollout to date has focused on delivering Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) supporting smart phones and high-performance modules and routers. eMBB supports a combination of voice, video and high-speed internet access for a broad range of mobile devices.

Not all IoT use cases need high-performance, high cost 5G eMBB hardware. However, many do require higher speeds and lower latency than mMTC or LPWA solutions provide, such as midrange IoT applications that currently run on 4G LTE using CAT 1 to CAT 4 devices.

RedCap delivers just the right level of performance for Mid-Tier IoT applications. RedCap devices are smaller, less complex, less expensive and use less power than more expensive, higher power 5G eMBB modules, but are more expensive and use more power than 5G mMTC.