M2M (Machine to Machine) connections will be the catalyst for over $35 billion of service revenues across a diverse range of industry sectors by the end of 2016, finds a new report by Juniper Research.

Sectors identified by the report as having particular potential included: Consumer and commercial telematics; smart metering; Point of sale; Retail; Banking; Mobile health monitoring; Smart buildings and security.

Marking a major inflection point, the book publishing industry has entered a period of long-term decline because of the rising sales of e-book readers, new IHS iSuppli research indicates.

Book revenue for U.S. publishers, including both e-books and paper books, will decrease at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3 percent from 2010 to 2014.

This marks a shift from the previous period of 2005 to 2010, when revenue grew slightly. 

Mobile operators AT&T and Sprint have recently struck deals with cellular embedded module vendors to provide modules for M2M (machine-to-machine) application developer partners at discounted rates. Their goal is to encourage app developers to embrace 3G -- and now 4G -- M2M modules.

After years of anticipation, the machine-to-machine (M2M) era has finally arrived. A new Yankee Group forecast predicts enterprise cellular M2M connections worldwide will surge from 81.8 million in 2011 to nearly 217.5 million in 2015. In the same time frame, connectivity revenue will more than double from U.S. $3.1 billion to U.S. $6.7 billion, making the M2M market one of the highest growth areas in the wireless arena during the next decade.

There's no question that in the long term LTE will become the mainstay 4G network technology, although its universal use is still in the future. Until then, says ABI Research, some service providers will benefit from a dual-platform strategy based on both LTE and WiMAX.

According to research director Philip Solis, "Intel and others are pushing the idea of heterogeneous networks. This is not to deny LTE's long-term position as the leading 4G platform, but to recognize that a small part of the ecosystem will still be characterized by diversity for some time."

Who stands to benefit?

The whole world is racing toward 4G. Verizon Wireless boasts it contains “the world’s fastest 4G network.” Sprint is going to “turbo charge your Internet with 4G.” Consumers are excited about the opportunities 4G presents including significantly improved mobile Internet and social networking experiences, movie and TV streaming, and enhanced gaming and shopping capabilities from their mobile devices.

IDC Energy Insights (Framingham, MA, USA) released a new analysis tool today called the "Worldwide Quarterly Smart Meter Tracker," which is forecasting worldwide growth of 13% in smart meter unit shipments by 2015, with a total of over 460 million meters shipped through the forecast period.

"Energy harvesting" is the capture of ambient energy, its conversion into a usable form, and its storage for immediate or future use. The types of ambient power that can be harvested include light, heat, motion, vibration, and RF. According to the latest ABI Research report, this type of energy is viable for M2M applications.

Examples of energy harvesting that have been around for decades include solar-powered calculators, wristwatches powered by body motion, and bicycle lights powered by a generator or dynamo run by friction with the wheel.

IDTechEx (Cambridge, MA, USA), an M2M-sector analyst firm, has released their "Printed and Chipless RFID Forecasts, Technologies & Players 2011-2021" report, which predicts a spike in this market to $3.93 billion by 2019.

In a newly released market forecast report by Dell'Oro Group (Redwood City, CA, USA), mobile backhaul market revenues are expected to exceed $8 billion by 2015. The report tracks two market segments: Transport, which includes microwave transmission and optical transport equipment, and Routers and Switches, which includes cell site devices, carrier Ethernet switches, and service provider edge routers used for IP-based mobile backhaul.