Thursday, April 26, 2012

"Machine-to-Machine" Connections Grew 37% in 2011

The global number of mobile network connections used for wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) communication increased by 37 percent in 2011 to reach 108.0 million, according to Berg Insight.

Asia-Pacific was the strongest regional market, recording a year-on-year growth rate of 64 percent and reached 34.5 million connections at the year-end.

Europe and North America grew by around 27 percent each to 32.3 million and 29.3 million connections respectively.

In the next five years, the global number of wireless M2M connections will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.2 percent to reach 359.3 million in 2016.

According to a recent report from analyst firm Current Analysis, it's unclear if revenues from M2M are accelerating as quickly as operators had hoped. That isn't surprising.


New technology products often are not proven to be market successes as rapidly as backers had hoped. In fact, it often can take as long as 10 years for adoption to reach an inflection point. M2M is not there yet, but the slower adoption is not an unexpected development.

Nor would it be surprising if expectations outstrip sales to an extent that proponents begin to "sour" on M2M as a major revenue driver for mobile service providers. Most important new technologies have hype that cannot be fulfilled in the short term, leading to deflated expectations. Only later do many important innovations actually begin to gain adoption and importance. 

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