Harbor Research 2006: machines will talk more

Staff -- Control Engineering, 9/1/2006

Machines will communicate much more in coming years, according to a report for all major wireless and wireline technologies for the M2M (machine to machine) pervasive Internet (PI) market, covering eight key vertical market sectors and more than 300 device types by Harbor Research. The report covers buildings, consumer/professional, energy, healthcare/life science, industrial, retail, and security/public safety and transportation.

The report addresses wireless technologies, including wireless WAN (Cellular GSM, CDMA and others), wireless LAN, and wireless PAN (Bluetooth, ZigBee and other 802.15.4), at the device, network, and service levels for each region worldwide.

The forecast shows that modules for wireless and wireline technologies will continue to grow substantially through 2011, with a combined annualized growth of more than 64% including WPAN devices. Excluding these, unit shipments are still expected to grow at an average rate of 32% per year. While this highlights the expected explosive growth of WPAN, it is also clear that device unit shipment growth for wireline, wireless WAN, and wireless LAN technologies also is expected to be robust.

With the focus in the M2M-PI market now shifting toward higher level services, a major part of the report covers the rapidly growing network and managed service opportunities.

Network Services Revenue is also expected to rise sharply over the period, demonstrating huge opportunities for network operators and virtual network operators. The forecasts for service growth have taken the early stages of this trend as the basis for forecasting, so there is a considerable upside potential for later years depending how quickly businesses can address implementation issues at the higher service levels, Harbor says.

At the vertical market sector level, one of the most dramatic changes compared with previous forecasts has been the energy venue because of the increasing political focus on energy conservation, alternative forms of energy, and environmental concerns. Out of the 30 devices covered, perhaps the most well known are utility meters on the demand side for commercial and residential premises. Less well known are supply-side opportunities, where there is now also a marked interest in remote services. Taken overall, M2M-PI service revenue in the energy venue is now expected to grow at an annualized rate of 49% for the period, a significant increase over forecasts from two years ago, the firm says. www.harborresearch.com