Another day, another predictive study of the telematic future. This time around its Berg Insight making its expectations known for how many people will be subscribed to telematics services. By 2020, the report claims as many as 159 million people will have some form of telematics in their vehicle.
Some of this is going to be down to people fitting their own aftermarket solutions, but a lot of this growth will come from vehicle manufacturers fitting the tech during the production process. The latest figures on the industry come from 2013 and they tracked around seven million new vehicles that support smartphone based telematics right out of the gate. By 2020, that number is expected to explode and hit 68.5 million.
Similarly, OEM embedded telematics solutions are going to go from just 8.4 million last year, to a much healthier 54.5 million 2020.
“A key factor that influences the growth in active subscribers is the length of the free trial period included in the price of new cars,” explained André Malm, senior analyst at Berg Insight (via TelecomstechNews).
However it isn’t just those buying new cars that are driving telematics adoption, as many of the vehicles being upgraded with telematics technology are fitting it after the point of sale. While some companies might benefit from replacing their vehicles and adding the hardware slowly, others can save a lot by adding aftermarket hardware to their existing fleet of vehicles.
TomTom’s WEBFLEET platform is the most popular in Europe
That group is arguably the biggest telematics adopter right now, with both the US and Japan driving it forward in the commercial sector. That could be for a number of different reasons though, like fuel savings, efficiency improvements, safety or vehicle recovery potential or to cut back on wasted costs like insurance fraud and out of hours vehicle usage.
The Berg Insight report also looked at some other emerging trends, like the fact that TomTom is currently the world’s fastest growing telematics provider, already catering to some 400,000 vehicles with its WEBFLEET platform. Masternaut isn’t far behind it with 350,000 vehicles under its care and between it and TomTom, the pair share an install base in Europe that is almost larger than every other telematics provider put together.
However, if you look at specific industries, these figures change. In the heavy truck sector, Transics is leading the way with over 85,000 vehicles under its care.
There’s also massive growth of telematics taking place in bespoke vehicle manufacturer technologies. Volvo, Ford and Daimler are all working on their own telematics solutions and have seen a big uptake in the personal and enterprise aspects of their business.
Those companies that don’t have their own telematics solution too, may soon have one as a growing trend among automakers is to buy up, or partner with a major telematics provider to offer the service and technology to their customers. For example, Citroën and Mercedes Benz, which have worked with Teletrac for a while now.
