Operators including Vodafone, O2, Telefonica, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are putting significant resources into developing M2M (Machine to Machine) business units. There is an increasing sophistication in how the market is viewed by all stakeholders, with after-market installation being replaced by embedded mobile strategies and SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) systems.
Meanwhile, several specialist companies including Jasper Wireless, Sierra Wireless and Numerex have made significant inroads in developing the M2M ecosystem through partnerships with the operator community in the last year. While this bodes well for the M2M market in the long-term, in the immediate term, uptake of M2M is still relatively modest in most industries for several reasons, including market fragmentation, high costs relative to ARPU1 and lack of buy-in from potential stakeholders.
It is also important to note that some M2M use cases are more dependent on revenue from pure connectivity than others. In the case of stolen vehicle recovery for instance, the M2M business case relies more on “connectivity readiness” than on-going connectivity.
In other cases, revenues from pure network capacity are not split out at all, though there is inevitably a cost associated with this traffic. This brings to light an important point: much of the potential within the business case of the M2M specialist relies on connectivity enablement and features which might be described as “enhanced connectivity, “that is, managing the connections once in place and allowing new devices to be added to an existing roll out in a seamless manner.
This white paper is an extract from: M2M & Embedded Strategies Telematics, CE, mHealth, Metering & Smart Buildings 2011-2016.
