KPN, NTT Docomo, Rogers, SingTel, Telefónica, Telstra, and Vimpelcom have announced their intention to cooperate to benefit the global machine-to-machine (M2M) market, and it is noteworthy that each of them offers an M2M service with a delivery platform provided by Jasper Wireless. Jasper is a vendor that has always championed the benefits of interoperability, a key component of the "Acquisition Engine" in Jasper's offering
It acts as a conduit to channel business among the operators' customer base.
But while interoperability and collaboration as a technical possibility are important, a genuine declaration of intent by companies to work together in practice is far more so. It highlights the two most important characteristics of the M2M market: the need to establish alliances and the need to focus on core competencies for the common benefit of all involved. Other high-level operator collaborations, created specifically for the benefit of the machine-to-machine industry, include the strategic alliance between Vodafone and Verizon, and the M2M Service Alliance of Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, TeliaSonera, Everything Everywhere, and Sprint.
Informa Telecoms & Media has carefully observed the expansion of the M2M market along with the fortunes of its service providers and is dedicated to making forecasts based on the largest available granular archive of real-world data. Contractual M2M dynamics for companies differ significantly from the world of short-term, pricing plans for consumers and are instead based on long-term, incremental, cumulative agreements where participants are partners rather than customers and patrons. The value in the M2M market is real, and the variety of potential use cases is enormous.
A joint survey by Informa and SAP of more than 250 global players found that seven out of ten operators surveyed believe M2M will generate 5% of their total revenue in 2015, despite current low revenue levels.
Source: Jamie Moss, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecom & Media
