According to Pyramid Research, fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) revenues will reach $80 billion in 2009, or 6 percent of total communications spend worldwide. Converged service revenue growth will be derived from value-added services and the migration of digital content from broadcasting networks to new converged networks. Pyramid Research expects converged services adoption to accelerate after 2007 as more services are provided and consumers migrated to convergent platforms.
Every executive who has approved a connected product roadmap has made a quiet assumption: the network underneath it will still be there. That assumption is about to be tested at a scale the automotive industry has never faced. The global connected vehicle installed base is heading toward a billion units, and the cellular technology most of those vehicles depend on is scheduled to begin its retirement before the end of the decade. For automakers, fleet operators, insurers, and the telecom carriers that serve them, the question is whether the recurring revenue those services promise can survive a connectivity layer with a shorter life than the vehicle carrying it. How Scale Meets an Expiry Date Omdia research forecasts that the global connected vehicle installed base will surpass 1.05 billion units by 2035, up from 473.7 million in 2025. Few installed bases of any kind more than double in a decade, and this one signals that connectivity is moving from premium differentiator to baseline e...