India Poised to Explode with M2M Innovation

As the second most populous country, one of the world’s fastest economies and the world’s only sub-continent, India is no stranger to superlatives. And the world’s watching the Indian marketplace very closely right now, as more and more industries begin dipping toes into the IoT pool.

According to a recent article in the Times of India, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Intel all expect India to be a center of IoT and M2M opportunity, and each deployed resources and manpower to establish development centers there in anticipation of the coming rush. They are already using Indian facilities to manufacture M2M hardware, mainly for foreign markets, but that could be about to change. Sales of wearables in India were at about 1 million units in 2014, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research, and they are expected to grow by about 50 percent in 2015.

One of the key growth areas will likely be in vehicle telematics for mobile communication, monitoring and location services. This is already one of India’s fastest-growing M2M sectors, driven largely by increased numbers of traffic accidents, vehicle thefts and demand for navigation services. One eventual endpoint for automotive telematics is, of course, driverless car technology. IHS iSuppli Corporation, a research, analysis, and consultancy firm for the technology, media, and telecommunications industries, reported that the Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) region, often grouped together as rapidly developing economies) has the fastest-growing global auto industry and the percentage of vehicles embedded with telematics technology is expected to reach 46 percent globally by the end of 2018. By itself, the Indian telematics industry is estimated to reach $150 million over the next few years.

As so much of the smart money goes to India, it’s going to be interesting to see how things develop in the western economies.