"M2M is not a sexy business – these monitors wake up periodically, send little bits of data and then go back to sleep. Average revenue for a carrier from these applications may be a few dollars a month, less than one-tenth of what they get from humans. But machines vastly outnumber humans, although cellular penetration for humans is still greater.
The analyst firm Berg Insight is forecasting the number of machines that will be connected to cellular networks in North America will reach 66 million by 2011, up from 9 million using cellular and satellite in 2006. Harbor Research says there are 110 million M2M devices in use now globally, communicating among themselves in a kind of 'Internet of machines.'
... Sam Lucero, an analyst with ABI Research... is forecasting M2M service revenues rising from about $2 billion last year to $8 billion in 2012...
Like other telecom sectors, M2M includes service providers and infrastructure and hardware vendors. The service providers typically buy airtime from cellular operators but they bristle at the notion that they are mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), not wanting to be associated with the failures of some MVNOs. ABI’s Lucero calls them MMOs, for M2M Mobile Operators, reasoning that MMOs like Aeris, Jasper Wireless and Kore Telematics have their own infrastructure on top of the cellular network."
