APAC leads M2M adoption; sales expected to reach $679 billion in 2023

Companies in Asia Pacific were among the leaders in M2M adoption globally, according to a global survey published by Vodafone Group. M2M, which connects previously isolated machines or devices to the internet to make the ‘Internet of Things’ possible, is now a mainstream solution as 22 percent of organisations on average globally have adopted M2M, an impressive increase of over 80 percent on last year.

In 2014, 27 percent of Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific (AMAP) based companies on average have adopted M2M solutions – a 15 point increase over 2013. Average adoption rates were 21 percent in Europe and 17 percent in the Americas, the survey revealed.
The survey, carried out by Circle Research, captured the views of more than 600 executives - 38 percent of whom were from the AMAP region - involved in setting M2M strategy in seven key industries across 14 countries, making it one of the leading global surveys of M2M implementation.

The 2014 survey predicts that the AMAP region will continue to lead the rest of the world over the next couple of years - with adoption expected to hit 48 percent on average across companies based in this region in 2015. This year’s report also suggests that by 2016 the gap will be negligible with all regions close to 55 percent average for adoption.
Globally three sectors have emerged as front runners in M2M with nearly 30 percent adoption rates – automotive, consumer electronics, and energy and utilities.

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“Consumer electronics sector is at the forefront of a shift from the warehouse to the living room. Automotive is the most mature of the sectors where M2M is now seen as an enabler for additional services such as remote maintenance and infotainment. M2M adoption in energy and utilities is also growing rapidly as ‘smart’ home and office services such as intelligent heating and connected security gain popularity,” Vodafone said in its report.

While more firms are seeing a return on investment from M2M than last year - 46 percent of respondents cited a ‘significant increase’ compared with 36 percent in 2013 - there are still some barriers to adoption, including managing security concerns and the challenges of global deployment.

Niklas Ekarv, director of machine-to-machine in Asia Pacific, Vodafone, said, “This year’s report findings leaves no doubt that momentum is accelerating as companies in Asia Pacific begin to realise the commercial potential of the Internet of Things. Machina Research expects M2M connections in Asia to grow at a CAGR of 20 percent till 2023. This technology is transforming whole industries across Asia as companies find new ways to operate and engage with their customers. Greater China is expected to dominate Asian M2M revenues as per Machina Research; followed by Japan, India, Korea and Australia.”

“We estimate that the market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow to over 9.4 billion connections by 2023 and is expected to be worth over $679 billion in revenues - a 4x multiplier increase over 2013,” Principal Analyst at Machina Research, Alex Chau, said.