Machine-to-machine (M2M) revenues will grow to $44.8 billion over the next five years, with more than a third coming from Asia-Pacific, Ovum said.
Telecom operators will not realize its full potential without strategic partnering, says Ovum.
Ovum reveals that revenues will grow slightly more slowly than connections, reflecting the increasing competitiveness of the market and the extension of M2M into lower-value applications.
Total global M2M connections will more than treble from 106.4 million in 2012 to 360.9 million in 2018, at a CAGR of 22.6 percent.
There will be growth across all regions, but it will be fastest in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa.
Revenues in Asia-Pacific will grow to almost $15 billion, at a CAGR of 26.5 percent, between 2012 and 2018.
The most important industry verticals in 2018 will be healthcare, manufacturing, and energy & utilities, which are forecast to generate revenues of $7.9 billion, $7.1 billion, and $7 billion respectively by 2018.
Jeremy Green, principal analyst, Industry Communications and Broadband at Ovum, said: “For telcos there are really two opportunities: to stand back and provide the connectivity for M2M services, or to roll up their sleeves and get involved with the end-to-end provision of solutions.”
The first is a smaller opportunity but is much more straightforward for telcos to address, according to Ovum. The second is much bigger, but involves new skills and competencies, and defining new kinds of relationship with systems integrators (SIs) and software development.
Telecoms need healthy and robust relationships with device manufacturers and Sis. If a carrier sees itself as an end-to-end provider, its partnering relations are more critical, because it is unlikely to be heard at the CXO level within an enterprise client unless it is working with a global SI.
Pix: Sprint
