Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.9%, the number of connections is projected to reach 58.6 million by 2013. Much of the growth will come from motor vehicles whose share of the installed base is expected to double from about 30% in 2008 to 60% in 2013.
Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst at Berg Insight, stated: “The total number of mobile network connections used by machines now equal that of a medium sized European country. While the market for personal communication has reached its saturation point, the machine communication market will continue to grow for many years to come. Berg Insight strongly advices mobile operators to become more actively involved in this market in order to position themselves for the future.”
The report identifies major differences in the types of machines that are being connected to mobile networks in different European countries. “Scandinavia has a very high proportion of smart energy meters, Germany and Italy mainly have motor vehicles and in Spain the market is dominated by security alarms and POS-terminals. Other countries such as the UK have a more diversified market landscape,” said Ryberg. There are also significant variations in the share of machine-to-machine SIM-cards, compared to the total number of SIM-cards. Sweden and Finland were found to have the highest rates of 13.4% and 7.7% respectively, several times higher than the average 2.2%.