Cargo Tracking Could Be Big Focus of M2M, IoT Satellite Operations, NSR Says

The global satellite machine-to-machine and IoT market should reach $2.9 billion in annual retail revenue by 2026, Northern Sky Research said Tuesday. NSR said land tracking, and particularly cargo tracking, likely will be the most profitable and competitive segment. It said most M2M and IoT services need only low bandwidth currently, but some verticals over the next decade will need additional bandwidth requirements for big data analysis, engine telematics and live data streaming, and those could be targeted by new mobile satellite service constellations. Low bandwidth and latency insensitive applications will be the focus of small satellite constellations, it said, as the business case for smallsat IoT-exclusive constellations is a question mark.