Service Provider Specialization Helping to Advance Overall M2M Market
(Business News, 19 Nov 2007 )
A key challenge to growth in the cellular M2M market has been the complexity of application development. However, ABI Research noted that in the past six months, service providers in the market have introduced offerings designed to give application developers important tools to ease the development burden and, consequently, help to increase overall market growth.
"The introduction of application-specific tools - such as eCallDirect from Aeris for telematics applications, Jasper Wireless' secure SIM for POS applications, and KORE Telematics' embedded GSM voice services for security systems and other applications—show that service providers are stepping up to the challenge of facilitating M2M application development," said Sam Lucero, senior analyst with ABI Research.
These recent developments are a natural outgrowth of the increased M2M service specialization, which is the fundamental strategy of both MVNOs and (more recently) M2M mobile operators within the M2M market.
"We can expect this focus on specialization and better enablement of M2M applications to increase in the coming months and years," observed Lucero. "These efforts will be complemented by players at other levels of the value chain, such as Wavecom and Telit with their embeddable SIM technology, and, in the near future, with hosted application platforms that should bring a true 'Web 2.0' feel to the M2M world. All of these developments should help to ensure that the market for M2M services enjoys a healthy rate of growth over the next five years."
