Based on 2012 shipment data, where cellular module revenues grew 21 percent YoY, ABI Research expects to see a further increase in shipments, reaching nearly 100 million units by 2015.

Practice director Dan Shey comments, "Module supplier's 2013 view of the market is cautiously optimistic to very optimistic.  Suppliers with a larger M2M cellular module end-use footprint in Europe are more reserved while those less exposed to Europe are expecting to grab world market share."

North America is expected to do well in 2013, increasing both its revenue share and shipment share of the module market.  Interestingly, the biggest increases in revenue and shipment share in 2013 will come from Latin America, and Middle East/Africa.  In all these regions telematics will be the biggest driver of growth.

Given Europe’s lingering recession, among other factors, positive shipment growth of 2G modules in the region will continue; however, price competition will become more problematic in part due to Asia-Pacific M2M module vendors.  SimCom already has a strong European customer base and Huawei is investing significantly in European distribution partnerships.

The "M2M Embedded Modules" database provides cellular module shipment and revenue estimates for 5 world regions, and 7 air interface technologies covering 2G, 3G, and 4G standards.  Application segmentation is provided for 13 markets with new industry segmentation recently added.  Country level data is new to this update and offered for 10 countries.

 These findings are part of ABI Research’s M2M Services and Modules Research Service.