By Telecom Lead Team: China’s cellular connection revenue
is expected to grow from $642 million in 2011 to $2.76 billion in 2016.
Currently, China’s cellular connection revenue constitutes more than one-third
of the Asia-Pacific’s (APAC) M2M market.
Lower operating costs have played a
significant part in this ongoing commoditization trend and have forced western
module vendors to up their game by moving up the value chain.
The cellular module market, a key measure of the M2M
market currently, is facing growing commoditization and price pressures from
China-based module vendors. These include not only larger vendors but smaller
vendors as well. The three largest Chinese module vendors are able to leverage
the scale of adjacent product offerings.
Carriers have made significant progress through
2011 in terms of developing technologies, unified platforms, applications, and
strategic cooperation,” said Jake Saunders, vice president of forecasting, ABI Research .
China Mobile started M2M development early, positioning
it as its third wave of its long-term business offerings. It has also moved
into developing M2M standards and promoting economies of scale, positioning
itself as an integrator with no real focus on an end-to-end solution approach.
China Unicom has launched sector-specific M2M
applications such as Bank New Horizon, Ocean New Horizon, and Logistics New
Horizon. In addition, China Unicom has also made inroads into the telematics
market as a telematics service provider (TSP).
China’s cellular module shipment is forecast to grow from
3.76 million in 2011 to an estimated 13.61 million connections in 2016,
constituting 32 percent of APAC’s forecast in 2011 and growing to 37 percent by
2016.
Please
see the complete coverage of Mobile World Congress here
