Market Overview

This research has targeted M2M, a mechanism that enables to exchange information between devices without the human assistance, with such devices embedded with communication modules compliant mainly to telecommunication standards of mobile phones/PHS. In the research, the trend of system constructions using networks and the trend of platform use are also covered.
The domestic M2M market size for FY2022 by sales at businesses rose by 9.5% from the previous fiscal year to 241,000 million yen, evacuated from the low growth in recent few years to a near double-digit growth. During FY2020 and FY2021 companies had become uncertain of their future amid the corona crisis, which had caused the investment in new systems to be on hold and the proof-of-concept cases to be put off.
As the influence of behavior restrictions declined in FY2022, labor shortage since before COVID and demand for labor saving and energy saving stood out, increasing the tendency to depend on remote-oriented processes that do not need human interventions, which upturned the business environment.

Noteworthy Topics

IoT Applications in Manufacturing

When manufacturing sites decided to use IT and Internet of Things (IoT), they at first focused on saving energy and visualization of the sites. To be specific, the efforts were made mainly on understanding of electricity consumption statuses aiming at saving energy, eventually at improvement of operation rates at facilities.

In the manufacturing industry, M2M was in the limelight in the year around 2000 and was antecedently applied to construction machinery, vending machines, elevators, MFPs (Multifunction Peripherals), medical equipment, measuring instruments (industrial measurement, natural environment measurements), causing these devices and instruments to be equipped with IoT-like communication specifications. This facilitated the use of IoT in the production sites for those companies with newly built factories and/or production lines, those that intend to save labor and energy, and those suffering from severe labor shortages. In recent years, IoT has expanded in the advancement of facility maintenance.

Future Outlook

As M2M is still vigorously demanded, the domestic M2M market size for FY2023 is projected to reach 272,000 million yen, an increase by 12.9% from the previous fiscal year. It is expected that 10% or so of growth will continue until FY2026.
Backdrop to this is the emerge of communication modules that support 5G in around FY2025 to FY2026, which would stimulate new demands for solutions for images (cameras) and connected cars, etc., and would generate new application areas due to the advent of diverse communication networks using 920MHz band.

The M2M application areas are expanding to remote monitoring and data collections at the time of monitoring facilities and equipment, next-generation facility maintenances, and monitoring in logistics and infrastructure, in addition to existing major areas such as energy related areas (smart meter solutions, concentrated monitoring, remote meter reading, remote control, etc.) and automotive areas (connected cars, etc.)
Hereafter, M2M applications are likely to spread to 5G supported image solutions, medical solutions and infrastructure inspections using image data, and crime- and disaster-preventive solutions.

Research Outline