Researchers say over half of the service providers participating in a survey have sizeable M2M businesses (i.e., providing at least one million M2M connections to customers) and that the automotive/transport/logistics and utility segments together account for nearly half of all M2M connections.
M2M is still predominately a 2G-based system, a study by Infonetics found: LTE remains nascent, making up only 1% of total devices; however, both 2G and LTE are expected to be the fastest-growing M2M access technologies in the near term. National coverage tops the list of M2M solution features rated very important by respondents, followed by web-based management tools and service-level agreements (SLAs).
For many service providers entering the M2M space, a service platform is key to jump-starting an M2M business: Those surveyed most often named Jasper Wireless and Ericsson as the top M2M platform providers
Market research firm Infonetics Research has done this research and released excerpts from its new M2M Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey, which provides insights into the machine-to-machine (M2M) market - also referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) - through the eyes of service providers providing or planning to offer M2M services.
"Service provider focus and prioritization of the M2M segment has been a relatively recent phenomenon, but as our latest M2M service provider survey shows, M2M is now scaling to be a significant business for a good number of providers around the world," notes Godfrey Chua, directing analyst for M2M and The Internet of Things at Infonetics Research.
Continues Chua: "The leading tier of M2M players have committed meaningful resources to developing their M2M businesses and now have significant scale to show for it - between 2 million to just under 10 million M2M connections. They have strategies in place and have created standalone M2M business units comprised of overlay go-to-market and technical organizations. M2M is no longer just an extension of the enterprise business unit for these service providers."
Some 55% of respondents are using internally-developed M2M service platforms, it found.