The Proliferation of M2M Devices Has Been Dampened Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic; while Connected Home Will Continue to Remain a Prominent Area, Connected Health Will Have a Higher Degree of Growth.
Machine-to-machine (M2M) devices and connections will experience significant growth during the forecast period. Key areas of application include connected homes, work, cities, cars, and health, with the connected homes segment securing a significant share in the market. The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which started in December 2019, took the world by surprise and continues to ravage the global economy. The test and measurement industry has suffered a setback in terms of growth rate because of the pandemic and so has the rate of proliferation of M2M devices. From an application perspective, the connected health segment is expected to experience the highest rate of growth over other applications, as the healthcare sector plays a crucial role in crisis management. This has to do with the surge in medical solutions to actively track, quarantine, and treat persons affected by COVID-19. Another market significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic is the telecom market where major deployments such as releases 16 and 17, which were due this year, have been delayed. These two releases were intended to set the course for complete Internet of Things (IoT) implementation across different industries.
The origin of the COVID-19 outbreak can be traced to China. Now that China and other countries in its vicinity such as Taiwan and South Korea have weathered the worst and restarted their economies, the author expects the Asia-Pacific to bounce back and regain its market share.
The key testing solutions covered include semiconductor automatic test equipment, radio frequency (RF) and digital testing equipment, gigabit Ethernet testing solutions as well as network performance test and monitoring solutions. Important factors that will drive the market include requirement to test technologies associated with 5G deployments, the high proliferation of multi-vendor M2M devices and connections as well as the use of critical edge computing technologies.
The COVID-19 outbreak will be the key restraint to the growth of the IoT test and measurement market. The author is optimistic that the pandemic will reach its peak in the coming months, and the economy will recover by the end of 2020. The economic repercussions will be felt for some time after the pandemic, and therefore it would take time for the IoT test and measurement market to recover. This study will analyze the key trends in the market and suggest what the test and measurement industry should focus on to emerge out of these unprecedented times. Regional-level market analysis has also been performed as part of the study, and important growth opportunities that the test and measurement community could capitalize upon have been laid out.
