ABI Research released two new reports of interest to the connected car space one on telematics providers and another on the feasibility of V2X over DSRC.
Telematics Leaders to Grow to $23 billion on 2022
According to BI Research’s Commercial Telematics Competitive Assessment report, Verizon retains its lead among 12 strategic commercial telematics suppliers in ABI Research’s recent competitive analysis. Trimble and Geotab ranked second and third place, respectively. Trimble came remarkably close, benefitting from its scale, extensively broad verticals as well as converged telematics and video. Geotab has had a dramatic rise from a 14th ranking only two years ago by developing a secure, scalable and open platform that has won both strategic customers and partners across the commercial telematics industry.
The top five vendors, overall, listed by rank include Verizon, Trimble, Geotab, TomTom Telematics, and Omnitracs. Also notable is the first inclusion of Beijing-based G7, the telematics leader in China, with strategic accounts like Amazon China and JD.com as well as facial recognition and AI powered by Argus.
ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies, forecasts global commercial telematics system revenues to rise across trucking segments from US$13.5 billion in 2017 to over US$23 billion in 2022. The commercial telematics industry will continue to change rapidly, addressing a changing marketplace from “co-opetition” to rising OEM factory installs to technologies such as prognostics, video, and blockchain.
“Verizon led with at least 15 OEM partnerships, prognostics capabilities, acquisitions such as Skyward and enterprise-grade APIs” says Susan Beardslee, Senior Analyst at ABI Research. “Trimble accelerated growth through its ISE and 10-4 Systems acquisitions, industry-leading vertical coverage beyond its core including rail, forestry, and utilities and its rapid acceleration of its ecosystem partnerships.” Beardslee continues, “Geotab’s is a vendor to some of North America’s largest fleets. They added extensive capabilities such as Guardian system by Seeing Machines and Noregon’s TripVision for prognostics.”
Of note, TomTom Telematics will be the first official partner for Microsoft’s Azure location-based services for critical location and real-time traffic data. Omnitracs continues joint development with Peloton on platooning and accelerated its driver prognostics capabilities as well as work with Cummins on OTA connectivity.
LTE-V2X -V2C over DSRC
With the LTE-V2X (LTE vehicle-to-everything) standard finalized and 5G standardization impending, the use of cellular technology for low-latency Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) applications is now a realistic prospect—one that will challenge the legacy IEEE 802.11p Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) standard. ABI Research finds autonomous level 4 and driverless level 5 vehicles will require V2V and V2I capabilities to achieve ultra-high reliability levels with carriers like Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SK Telecom, Telefonica, and Vodafone already performing trials on automotive 4G and/or 5G use cases.
“The evolutionary path offered by cellular technologies and their large supporting mobile ecosystem is an attractive option for automotive suppliers and OEMs eager to execute early implementations of autonomous functionality,” says Dominique Bonte, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research. “While cellular antagonists claim DSRC is more mature, reliable, secure, and ready to deploy, it remains to be seen whether it will survive the onslaught of the cellular ecosystem or continue to coexist with future cellular alternatives.”
The legacy IEEE 802.11p DSRC standard allows reliable low latency communication of basic safety messages between vehicles and between vehicles and roadside infrastructure. While a DSRC mandate seems imminent in the U.S., ABI Research expects cellular V2X to show steady growth, initially through LTE-V2X, reaching 300 million global subscriptions by 2030. At that point, 5G V2X will surpass it. Longer term, automotive OEMs will start to offer network-based low-latency, end-to-end automotive services.
“The main challenge for cellular V2X is to get hold of dedicated spectrum needed for the Device-to-Device, or D2D, V2V protocol,” concludes Bonte. “While the intelligent transportation systems spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band was made available in the U.S., Europe, and other regions more than a decade ago, it remains reserved for DSRC. But this could change if, or more likely when, cellular giants like Ericsson, Qualcomm, and Samsung, unite and fight for lobbying power.”