I followed the Ericsson Capital Markets Day last week on the live webcast, and it was fascinating too, particularly their vision for the communications sector. They believe we are about to see a third and distinct phase in the development of the sector. First came fixed communications, which over the past 100 years has enabled 750 million buildings to connect. Second, (and still underway) is the mobile era that will enable 5 billion people to communicate. But over the next decade and a half will come a third stage where up to 50 billion things (cars, appliances, office machines, cargoes, etc.) will connect to the network using machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies. 

We share this vision with Ericsson. Last year in a report titled New Business Models Emerge For Telcos we said there would be more change in the next decade than happened in the past century. We touched on the broadening of the definition of communications traffic, how communications will become intelligent, and the move to transaction pricing – all three echoed by Ericsson. In March this year, my colleague Michele Pelino set out our view on M2M in her report, The M2M Market Is A Blossoming Opportunity. I followed this up with a case study to illustrate how M2M technology is real today and not just about potential – see the report, Case Study: How Orange Business Services Is Building A New Machine-To-Machine Market.  

So Forrester and Ericsson are clearly on the same page on this topic. But what do you think? I’m happy to discuss.