Australian companies are leading the charge in the adoption of machine to machine (M2M) technologies in South East Asia, and the channel will drive the next wave of adoption.
According to research from Frost & Sullivan, distributors and value-added resellers will soon replace direct sales and dominate the value chain to ensure end-to-end service delivery, steering the market towards a compounded annual growth rate of 17.2 per cent during 2015-2020.
While M2M deployment is at an early stage in many other countries in the region, the firm said this will change as automation and electronic systems suppliers adopt the Internet of Things (IoT).
“The spate of mergers and acquisitions over the past four to five years will continue in the manufacturing software and hardware sectors,” Frost & Sullivan industrial automation and process control industry analyst, Krishnan Ramanathan, said.
“The IIoT [Industrial Internet of Things] environment has many complexities as it involves connecting and securing millions of devices, and analysing the explosive amounts of data generated. Strategic acquisitions could simplify these challenges,” he said.
The research found that the automotive industry contributes the highest to M2M software and services market revenues, at 35 per cent, while another 10 per cent is from the foods/beverages and chemicals/petrochemicals segments.
The firm said factories in the region should see benefits in terms of savings, improved transparency and control over processes, and higher resource optimisation. It also forecasts that the IIoT would gain traction and universal standards will be put in place.
Frost & Sullivan pointed to the automotive industry, where it said there is high demand for M2M technologies to alert emergency services in the event of an accident. It said these trends will garner interest from connectivity service providers, encouraging collaboration.
“Innovation and foresight will be vital while developing technologies as success requires that systems be easily deployable and yield a reasonable return on investment,” Ramanathan said.
“Data analytics, which is integral to M2M, will be a game changer in the industry to generate high stakeholder value through improved inventory management and asset monitoring.”
