The commercial telematics industry is set for very strong growth in the next five years, especially in the enterprise and SME segments, according to analyst firm ABI Research.
It is just a matter of time before the first vendor exceeds 1 million vehicles under management, with Fleetmatics having set a target of 1.2 million subscriptions by 2020, ABI added.
?We are witnessing the emergence of a very dynamic ecosystem characterized by cut-throat competition, aggressive marketing, mergers and acquisitions galore, and high levels of equity investment with high expectations about quick returns,? says ABI Research VP and GM Dominique Bonte.
?This results in accelerating awareness about the many benefits of telematics far beyond the traditional asset tracking, diagnostics and fuel saving paradigms.?
Technologies such as onboard diagnostics (OBD) dongles and Cloud/SaaS solutions linked to hardware agnostic approaches leveraging third party application developer ecosystems on smartphones and ruggedized tablets are critical growth drivers.
They allow vendors such as Telogis, PeopleNet (Trimble), Astrata, Zonar, CalAmp and Geotab to cost-efficiently address wide ranging requirements across a large number of segments, including the growing commercial vehicle OEM opportunity.
Optimized routing and truck-based navigation capabilities enabling low-cost delivery are becoming critical assets for addressing exploding e-commerce retail models, goods distribution and work flow management.
However, while telematics increasingly empowers the knowledge worker, new smart mobility paradigms are already appearing on the horizon, threatening to disrupt the status-quo with autonomous trucks and self-driving taxis expected to redefine the role of the driver or even removing it completely.
Finally, commercial telematics and fleet management solutions are no longer mainly confined to the United States and Western Europe with China, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Eastern Europe representing increasingly important opportunities for both local and foreign players.
