Like many other Telem­at­ics appli­ca­tion providers, I was seduced by the over-​​exaggerated growth pro­jec­tions from the mar­ket ana­lysts dur­ing the early 2000’s. While our indus­try expe­ri­enced mod­er­ate growth dur­ing the first half of the decade, it always needed some BIG things to hap­pen to help it grow expo­nen­tially. This included com­mit­ted par­tic­i­pa­tion by key mar­ket dri­vers such as cel­lu­lar car­ri­ers, cus­tomers, device man­u­fac­tur­ers, appli­ca­tion providers and investors. How­ever, until recently, many of these poten­tial mar­ket dri­vers were never really con­fi­dent enough to com­mit. I now believe that our indus­try is finally poised to take off and here are five rea­sons why:

Com­mit­ment by the cel­lu­lar carriers:

It is no secret that the cel­lu­lar car­ri­ers have been on the look­out for new sources of rev­enue. Many have been work­ing with Telem­at­ics providers since the late 1990’s, but with our low ARPU, they never really took the indus­try seri­ously. Ini­tia­tives such as the Sprint /​ M2M DataS­mart and AT&T /​ Jasper Wire­less part­ner­ships are show­ing that the car­ri­ers are now get­ting seri­ous about this space in order to grow their rev­enues. They will be big pro­po­nents of the ben­e­fits of Telem­at­ics to their huge cus­tomer base, which will sig­nif­i­cantly increase adoption.

Com­mit­ment by customers:

As busi­nesses recover from the Great Reces­sion, they will real­ize that they can no longer ignore the built in inef­fi­cien­cies within their oper­a­tions. They will want to oper­ate leaner and will uti­lize Telem­at­ics appli­ca­tions to stream­line their processes and reduce unnec­es­sary expenses.

Com­mit­ment by device manufacturers:

Due to the wide range of appli­ca­tions, device man­u­fac­tur­ers now see the oppor­tu­nity to sell hun­dreds of thou­sands of devices, which will help drive the economies of scale needed to push device costs down. This will help increase adop­tion since poten­tial end users will no longer view the imple­men­ta­tion costs as being as pro­hib­i­tive as they were in the past.

Com­mit­ment by appli­ca­tion providers:

Many new appli­ca­tion providers are emerg­ing with unique prod­ucts that will grow the mar­ket. This includes Telem­at­ics appli­ca­tions designed to help insur­ance car­ri­ers imple­ment pay-​​per-​​use poli­cies. In addi­tion, appli­ca­tions such as smart meter read­ing and remote asset mon­i­tor­ing will help drive growth due to the sheer num­ber of machines through­out the world. The inte­gra­tion of new con­sumer appli­ca­tions such as Sync and mbrace by auto man­u­fac­tur­ers will eas­ily grow the mar­ket by mil­lions of new devices. There are also many remote patient mon­i­tor­ing appli­ca­tions that will play a sig­nif­i­cant role in how health­care ser­vices are deliv­ered in the future.

Com­mit­ment by investors:

As we gain addi­tional trac­tion with the cel­lu­lar car­ri­ers, cus­tomers, device man­u­fac­tur­ers, and appli­ca­tion providers, investors will see Telem­at­ics as a rel­a­tively low risk oppor­tu­nity and will pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing to our indus­try.
Now I believe that the mar­ket ana­lyst pro­jec­tions that I and trum­peted over and over dur­ing the early 2000’s are now finally com­ing to fruition. This is because we finally have the com­mit­ment from the mar­ket dri­vers that will pro­pel this indus­try forward.

About the author: 
Yukon Palmer is the founder and Pres­i­dent of Field­Logix – the provider of a Green GPS Fleet Man­age­ment solu­tion designed to reduce fleet fuel con­sump­tion and improve pro­duc­tiv­ity. His career in the Telem­at­ics indus­try began in 2000 at Tele­trac while he was also earn­ing his MBA at San Diego State Uni­ver­sity. Yukon was recently selected by the San Diego Daily Tran­script as one of San Diego’s “Young Influentials”.