Steve Rogerson walked the halls at last week’s Embedded World in Nuremberg and found life looking good for the IoT industry.

I am back from an exhausting week in Nuremberg, negotiating the crowded halls that made up last week’s Embedded World trade show. And it was crowded, especially the Wednesday where just getting from A to B proved time consuming, and dangerous. I got well clouted by someone’s backpack as they turned around; there’s a cloakroom, leave them there.

Anyway, I digress. The point of me getting from A to B was to find out what was going on in the IoT world and as such I had a lovely conversation on Telit Cinterion’s stand with vice president Marco Stracuzzi and connectivity director Eyal Yasmin.

“There is a lot of talk about cyber security with the new regulations coming in, especially in Europe,” said Marco. “All the different vendors are trying to work out what they need to do to comply with the new regulations. This is good and it is necessary.”

Brandon Satrom, senior vice president at Blues, said he wasn’t hearing a lot on security, but said that was because his company’s products were secure by default.

“That tends to instil a lot of confidence,” he said.

The big topic Brandon is seeing is the increased use of satellite communications in the IoT space.

“We are seeing more interest in satellites,” he said. “People are now seeing satellite as an option. In the past, they would go to LoRa or whatever, but now they seek satellites. Agriculture is a big opportunity for satellites. So is shipping.”

He said the falling price of satellite communications was beginning to see some moving from using it as a fallback to being seen as the primary communications. He said it could be three to five years before that happened on a large scale.

Carmen Redondo from KYOCERA AVX has also seen an increased interest in satellite communications. “We are seeing a lot more interest in satellite,” she said. “This is a focus for us. There is a lot of interest in South Americas where even the highways don’t have cellular coverage. Mexico and Brazil are showing interests on farms and the oil and gas sector, and for detecting fires in forests.”

She agreed with Brandon that the costs of satellite and other methods were getting closer, but said it would take some time for parity.

Last year, Blues introduced LTE Cat 1 bis products and Brandon said this had been well received by customers.

“Cat 1 bis has been pretty popular,” he said.

Another hot security topic is the ongoing saga of products from China, but Marco said the concern these days was that designers were worried not about the perceived security threat but that future regulations might ban certain modules and thus meant designs had to be reworked or even ditched.

“This side of the ocean, there are some geopolitical problems with components coming from China,” he said. “We get requests that the supply chain is independent from China for critical components. The trend started in the USA and has come to Europe.”

He said there was no formal ban on working with China for modules.

“We are not there yet,” he said. “We don’t know if there will be a formal ban but companies are preparing in case regulations follow. In the USA, there have been some formal actions, especially for those working with the government.”

Telit, he said, used to make modules in China but stopped due to requests from customers.

“Customers want us to be strict in the supply chain,” he said. “Some want to know the origin of the key components. This is something we can’t ignore; we have to adjust to the geopolitical situation.”

As to the show itself, Marco and Eyal were happy.

“It has been so busy,” said Marco. “This is a show where we meet a lot of developers and engineers who know exactly what they want and come with specific requests. This is good It means the demand is there for our business. It means the market is there, orders are picking up, the market is back on track.”

Brandon said the final two days of the show had more people than the whole show last year.

So, overall, a good show. The IoT industry is feeling optimistic. Security is and will stay a big issue. Satellite communications are coming down in price. And the bruise from that backpack is already fading. Who could ask for more?