Nordic Semiconductor and Kigen will demonstrate remote SIM provisioning for massive IoT at next month’s CES in Las Vegas.

The technical collaboration should result in robust and simple eSIM profile management, critical for massive IoT deployments. Nordic’s Thingy:91 X IoT platform and Kigen’s eSIM IoT remote manager enable rapid customer development and testing of profile management.

The partnership combines Kigen eSIMs and eSIM IoT remote manager (eIM) for SGP.32 IoT eSIMs with Nordic’s nRF9151 system-in-package (SiP), underscoring both companies’ commitment to offering robust, secure, low-power cellular IoT that removes the technical barriers to wireless connectivity and enables rapid scalability of the IoT. 

Nordic and Kigen will showcase their innovations at CES (www.ces.tech), offering visitors demonstrations and in-depth discussions with their engineering teams. CES will be held in Las Vegas from January 7 to 10, 2025. Nordic can be found on stand 52039 at the Venetian Expo.

“The joint testing between Kigen eIM and Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF9151 reflects our shared commitment to innovation in low-power, compact and battery-efficient IoT devices,” said Vincent Korstanje, CEO of Kigen (kigen.com). “At Kigen, this is part of our vision to ensure that standards bring benefits to the broadest set of players, making this transformative technology accessible, cost-effective and scalable for businesses of all sizes.”

Oyvind Birkenes, executive vice president at Nordic Semiconductor (www.nordicsemi.com), added: “The collaboration with Kigen has produced an outcome that’s much more than just an important technical milestone. Rather, the simplicity brought by Kigen combined with the highly integrated, low power and cost-efficient nRF9151 SiP has the potential to transform the cellular IoT landscape by making it easier and faster for all sizes of companies to deploy massive IoT applications.”

The collaboration shows a shared commitment to delivering robustly tested, high-quality options for low power, compact IoT designs. Such products are critical for the success of massive IoT deployments such as industrial automation, asset tracking and smart metering. The open and productive work has resulted in successful testing of the eIM platform and eSIM on the nRF9151 and sets the stage for further trials and support for commercial deployments in early 2025. Both Kigen’s eIM and Nordic’s nRF9151 (www.nordicsemi.com/Products/nRF9151) are available now.

The GSMA’s SGP.32 standard simplifies remote SIM provisioning (RSP) for resource- and network-constrained low-power IoT devices. Designed to the latest specification (SGP.32v1.2), Kigen eIM (kigen.com/products/eim) helps coordinate, streamline and simplify remote eSIM profile management for low-power IoT devices at scale. With Kigen, SIM profile management and RSP are accessible to all small and medium enterprises making them broadly applicable to the massive IoT market for the first time.

Nordic’s Thingy:91 X (www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-hardware/Nordic-Thingy-91-X) with a Kigen eSIM connects to the eIM platform to perform SIM profile changes. Thingy:91 X is a cellular IoT prototyping platform built around the nRF9151 SiP and supporting LTE-M, NB-IoT, GNSS, Bluetooth LE, wifi and DECT NR+ wireless standards.

For eSIM profile management and RSP development purposes, the Thingy:91 X resembles a low-power IoT device with an embedded application that communicates with the IoT profile assistant (IPA) in the eSIM to help supervise the full set of profile operations, including profile switch. The combination of Thingy:91 X, eSIM and eIM is for those looking to fast-track IoT developments.

The Kigen eIM with Nordic nRF9151 SiPs is available for customer trials, with commercial deployment slated for early 2025. It supports any eSIM RSP, network and technology with Kigen eSIM OS.