M2M communication in consumer space to rise

India will be test market for several applications in this space

With smartphone penetration increasing, analysts believe that machine-to-machine communiaction in the consumer space will soon be reality. India will be test market of several such applications that will allow M2M communication in future, said a Deloitte study.

Deloitte predicts that a sizeable number among the approximately 350 million Internet-enabled but unconnected devices in India would be connected to the web. With technology providers coming up with more applications that would facilitate smart connectivity among devices and standardization of communications protocols, there is a strong case for the development of a large set of interconnected machine clusters that would be marketed as integrated electronic lifestyle solutions.

The number of smartphone users in urban India will cross 104 million in 2014 compared with 51 million users in 2013, according to the 4th edition of Deloitte’s predictions for the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) in India in 2014. Further, smartphone users are expected to drive the highest video consumption on mobile. The report adds that consumers are increasingly becoming screen agnostic, and are viewing video content on their smartphones both inside and outside the home.

“We expect a clear transition towards more intelligent Set Top Box along with IP-enabled TV sets, which would jointly drive TV to be a part of the internet,” said Deloitte.

A high growth expected in smartphones and tablets would help the electronic goods vendors to come up with “integrated electronic lifestyle solutions”for differentiating themselves in a highly competitive market place.

“In 2014, mobile video is likely to be the preferred service over other mobile value added services,” says PN Sudarshan, Senior Director, Deloitte in India. “We anticipate 50-60 per cent of all the mobile data consumption in India to be driven by video over next 2-3 years.”With improved networks and connectivity, users will increasingly consume higher resolution video.While pre-downloaded and side-loaded form of video will continue to be a major part of the overall video consumption on mobile, Deloitte envisages emergence of innovative business models in mobile video streaming/time-restricted download space in 2014," he added.