As businesses turn to the Internet of Things for growth, M2M WAN connections are set to triple by 2018, says market research firm Infonetics Research.
"M2M continues to gather momentum as enterprises, in the never-ending pursuit of competitive advantage, seek to find new ways of using connected technologies to improve business agility and lower operational costs," said Godfrey Chua, directing analyst for M2M and The Internet of Things at Infonetics Research.
C"For service providers, there are significant and fast growing opportunities ahead. Specifically, cellular technologies are playing an increasingly important role in enabling M2M services, comprising the vast majority of WAN wireless M2M connections today, over 220 million, and nearly tripling to just over 630 million connections by 2018.
"Among the cellular generations, 2G and 3G are the majority currently, but it's LTE that will grow the fastest, starting from a small base and then expanding rapidly, supported by efforts like AT&T/GM/OnStar and other connected car initiatives, as well as China Mobile's massive LTE TDD network rollout."
The global market for M2M services reached just over $16 billion in 2013, and there were nearly 1.7 billion M2M connections worldwide, the report says, with a growing list of global tier 1 players supporting more than 10 million M2M connections each
M2M access services-where operators' broadband services function as M2M access solutions-make up over 16% of M2M service revenue, around $3bn.
Global revenue from M2M services is forecast by Infonetics to grow at an 18% CAGR from 2013 to 2018.
For technology vendors, it is increasingly important to build networking solutions that take into consideration the architectural requirements of the various M2M use cases that are proliferating, as well as the portfolio of emerging connection technologies, stated the report authors.