(iTers News) - Market research firm Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its latest M2M Connections and Services by Vertical report, which provides market size, analysis, and forecasts for machine-to-machine (M2M) connections and services by technology, vertical, and geographic region.

“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,” notes Godfrey Chua, directing analyst for M2M and The Internet of Things at Infonetics Research.

Chua adds: “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,” continues Chua. According to the market research firm,  global market for M2M services reached just over US$16 billion in 2013, and there were nearly 1.7 billion M2M connections worldwide, as a growing list of global tier 1 players are supporting more than 10 million M2M connections each. The M2M “access” services—where operators’ broadband services function as M2M access solutions—make up over 16% of M2M service revenue, around US$3  billion. In addition, 80% of M2M devices in 2013 were connected via personal area network (PAN) technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee. 

Looking forward, the makret research firm predicts that global revenue from M2M services is forecast to grow at an 18% CAGR from 2013 to 2018.

(Credit: Infonetics Research)