The commercial telematics industry is set for strong growth in the next five years, especially in the enterprise and SMB segments, with players such as Telogis and Fleetmatics leading the way in these respective verticals in the United States, according to ABI Research. The research firm says it is just a matter of time before the first vendor exceeds 1 million vehicles under management, with Fleetmatics having set a target of 1.2 million subscriptions by 2020.

“We are witnessing the emergence of a very dynamic ecosystem characterized by cutthroat competition, aggressive marketing, mergers and acquisitions galore, and high levels of equity investment with high expectations about quick returns. This results in accelerating awareness about the many benefits of telematics far beyond the traditional asset tracking, diagnostics and fuel-saving paradigms,” said vice president and general manager Dominique Bonte.

Technologies such as onboard diagnostics (OBD) equipment and Cloud/SaaS solutions linked to hardware agnostic approaches leveraging third party application developer ecosystems on smartphones and tablets are critical growth drivers. They allow vendors such as Telogis, PeopleNet (Trimble), Astrata, Zonar, CalAmp and Geotab to cost-efficiently address wide ranging requirements across a large number of segments, including the growing commercial vehicle OEM opportunity.

Optimized routing and truck-based navigation capabilities enabling low-cost delivery are becoming critical assets for addressing exploding e-commerce retail models, goods distribution and work flow management. However, while telematics increasingly empowers the knowledge worker, new smart mobility paradigms are already appearing on the horizon, threatening to disrupt the status quo with autonomous trucks and self-driving taxis expected to redefine the role of the driver or even remove it completely.

Commercial telematics and fleet management solutions also are no longer mainly confined to the United States and Western Europe with China, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East and Eastern Europe representing increasingly important opportunities for both local and foreign players.

These findings are part of ABI Research’s Commercial Vehicle Telematics Research Service, which includes research reports, market data, insights and competitive assessments.