Machine-to-Machine Markets: The Machine Revolutions

Latin America has a mobile phone penetration of approximately 103%, a figure that indicates some level of saturation. In this sense, the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies market appear with great potential for development, what led Frost & Sullivan to conduct a recent regional study on the topic. The objectives were to contextualize the subject, to verify its offer in the six largest countries in the region, to identify drivers and barriers and to point out the major initiatives. 

The top eight markets identified were: Industry, Retail and Finance, Safety and Emergency, Transportation, Healthcare, Utilities, Consumer and Home, Infrastructure and Buildings. The first four are found in a more mature phase, with the industry already showing infrastructure based on M2M processes; Retail and Finance have a very structured network of POS machines (card payment) and ATM; and Safety and Emergency posses various alarm products and private monitoring, besides public systems of civilian oversight. In the transportation sector relies now the strongest promise for M2M development inBrazil, based on two major Denatran (National Traffic Department) projects. The first aims to deploy tracking chips in the entire fleet of new vehicles sold inBrazilby the second half of 2012. The other comes from the SINIAV (National System for Automatic Vehicle Identification), which aims to have all vehicles in the country tracked by radio frequency technology. 

As for the Healthcare and Utilities sectors, they emerge as high potential in a longer term, depending on further technological innovation and government procedures. The expectation by 2020 is that both industries show higher impact in their markets, highlighting the intelligent networks (smart grids) with potential to generate millions of remote devices supplied with data chips, one for each residence. In addition, House and Buildings should occupy a more relevant position when the technology is better established in other sectors, as for examples home appliances and of commercial use communicating with each other and with external recipients. 

As for the technical level, there is still a lack of technology standards amongst existing devices. In the commercial field, many regional carriers are in the initial stage of the supply structuring process, while demand itself has not yet found the most effective and feasible way to address the issue. Within this scenario, we will probably see the next steps for this market evolution that is now the next big step for the global telecommunications sector.