M2M: A Eur 30 billion worldwide market driven by automotive, consumer electronics & utilities

Over the next few years, the M2M market will clearly be driven by three key verticals: automotive, consumer electronics and utilities.

In recent years, the market has been driven by a few major verticals like Fleet management, Industrial asset management and Security. But the overall market in volume remains small, with potential for each market in tens of millions.

In the upcoming years, there will be new major verticals (including Automotive, Connected consumer electronics and Utilities). Potential volume is definitely higher by expanding towards consumer objects (billions) rather than industrial objects only. Moreover, regulations will stimulate automotive in Europe and utilities though public policies in some regions worldwide. However, while they will theoretically drive the market, certain barriers could obstruct growth in these sectors. In the short term, some applications in these key verticals are recurrently delayed (as with the eCall regulation in Europe which is now expected to be rolled out from October 2018) and have a potential impact on the traditional M2M market. Moreover, the utilities market is seen as less attractive with business opportunity being somewhat limited for Telcos (concentrator will only be cellular connected). UK is a key exception as a cellular concentrator will be installed in almost all households (in two main regions out of the three).

In the future, the market will be focused on emerging segments like healthcare with remote patient monitoring and smart homes.

The M2M market is still growing very fast

In 2014, the number of active M2M modules (all technologies included) reached 1.2 billion units. They will top over 4.1 billion by 2019 with a 29% CAGR:

• In 2015, the cellular market is expected to represent 290 million modules worldwide for a total market of 30 billion EUR. The annual growth of the M2M market is around 10% in value and 26% in volume, compared with 2014. Most revenues will come from software and IT services.
• Asia-Pacific will dominate Europe and North America in volume only. Europe will still lead in value, followed by Asia-Pacific. Since 2012, China has led the M2M world and has overtaken the USA in terms of cellular modules installed.

M2M players seeking business opportunities beyond their core expertise

M2M offers them attractive opportunities for Telcos, as, despite low and declining ARPU, projects offer high lifetime value, reduced churn rate and average deals representing thousands of SIM cards. Connectivity alone should represent more than 20% of total SIM cards for European telcos. Telcos are also trying to consolidate and reinforce their position on connectivity by looking at partnerships with LPWA providers, allowing them to address emerging applications.

Representing two thirds of the market, IT services are key in M2M and all players along the value chain are therefore attempting to position themselves by grabbing a piece of this lucrative market. Main players are looking at new services based on the cloud and Big Data (though analytics mainly), allowing them new business opportunities.

Finally, module providers are also challenged to break even in a market where unit prices are falling. In addition to services, they also attempt to offer connectivity services helping them provide end-to-end offering (MVNO acquisitions by Sierra and Neul purchased by Huawei).