Mobile Asset Tracking Solutions Evolve to Create Business Intelligence and Integration Opportunities

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

The North American mobile asset tracking (MAT) market is transforming into the mobile asset management market, as simply tracking asset location will no longer suffice.  Today, enriched sensors are the key MAT value proposition, monitoring temperature, humidity, light, motion, vibration, pressure, and even volume. However, the next area of competitive differentiation and value-add will go a step further and focus on analytics and integration. MAT as a silo solution has limited—and decreasing—value. Success lies in linking and utilizing MAT’s rich business intelligence to create improved and more proactive business decisions and processes.

Frost & Sullivan’s research insight, The North American Mobile Asset Tracking Market, finds packaged third-party MAT applications are preferred among users due to their affordability and ease of deployment, with MAT cost savings currently rated as their biggest business impact. The study provides relevant responses to Frost & Sullivan’s latest MAT survey, key market trends, and profiles of major industry participants like Actsoft, AT&T, Fleet Complete, Trimble, Oracle, Sprint, Verizon, Spireon, OnAsset and CalAmp. Current innovations, as well as near-term growth opportunities for today's MAT providers, are discussed.

“Vertical expertise is becoming increasingly valuable with solutions, sensors, and reports packaged and tailored to specific industries. For example, temperature sensors become extremely critical as governmental regulation of cold chain goods subject to spoilage or damage increases,” stated Frost & Sullivan Mobile & Wireless Communications Industry Director Jeanine Sterling.

Disruptive trends in the market include:

• Stronger interest in finding new uses for the data being collected by sensors, especially in incorporating predictive analytics to anticipate future equipment conditions/activity and to enrich other related work processes;
• Hardware enhancements, such as lengthening battery life and reducing user costs;
• Migrating from 3G to lower-powered and less-expensive Internet of Things data network connectivity, which decreases costs and opens up MAT down market; and
• Increasing demand by MAT customers for modularity and flexibility.

To harness these trends and expand growth opportunities, MAT providers should forge partnerships with equipment, trailer, and machinery original equipment manufacturers, create more vertical-specific solutions, and leverage wireless carriers as a channel to expand small-medium enterprise business opportunities.

“Potential customers may worry about affordability, deployment difficulties, and the challenges of harvesting actionable data; however, many of these challenges can be resolved by providers pairing up with the right channel partners to begin with,” noted Sterling. “Maintaining close relationships with customers, providing flexible pricing models, and finding reseller partners that can offer customers a complete MAT solution will further mitigate customer concerns and aid providers’ growth.”

The North American Mobile Asset Tracking Market is part of Frost & Sullivan’s Mobile and Wireless Communications Growth Partnership Service program.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community.