Category: Connected Mobility

Disruptive Business Model: Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS)

~ Bill Martin ~ Leave a comment

Mobility as a service (MaaS) incorporates the options/elements of an emerging and new transportation model—particularly in urban areas—that removes the need for private vehicle ownership by offering bundled transportation options as a service. Through an integrated effort of public and private organizations, riders can embark on personalized and optimized transportation routes using a variety of different transportation modes including cars, buses, trains, bikes and scooters.  MaaS promises to revolutionize transportation by building and lkeveraging platform technology to connect and improve all aspects of travel. The philosophy can be applied across a broad range of technologies from autonomous cars through to connected cities. For businesses, MaaS initiatives aim to unify all modes of transport for a business into one simple and easy to use platform with the objective of improving cost and efficiency through shorter travel planning and cost comparison. For families or solo travelers, Mobility-as-a-Service aims to improve the planning and management of travel into a customized journey without the challenge of searching through multiple booking search engines.

Every business model requires a monetization method. Mobility-as-a-service on the surface has a straightforward model: MaaS providers charge either a fixed-rate or variable rate for different service options. However, things get complicated due to the interconnectivity of the system. While specific roles maintain traditional revenue models such as manufactures wholesaling, transportation providers rely on a complicated method for dividing up payments.  This method hinges upon many variables including rides per day, distance traveled, cost per trip, etc. These organizations will need to evolve towards a equitable system that makes MaaS profitable for all those involved.

The Future of Connectivity – McKinsey

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As the world experiences a quantum leap in the speed and scope of digital connections, industries are gaining new and enhanced tools to boost productivity and spur innovation.

Over the next decade, existing technologies like fiber, low- to mid-band 5G networks, low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), and Wi-Fi 6—as well as short-range connections like radio-frequency identification (RFID)—will expand their reach as networks are built out and adoption grows. At the same time, new generations of these technologies will appear with upgraded standards. In addition, new types of more revolutionary and more capital-intensive frontier connectivity like high-band 5G and low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites will begin to come online. Together, these technological developments will unlock powerful new capabilities across industries. Near global coverage will allow the expansion of use cases even to remote areas and enable constant connectivity universally. Massive IoT advances will be enabled as new technologies allow high device densities, and mission critical services will take advantage of ultra-low latency, highly reliable, and highly secure connections.

From healthcare and manufacturing to mobility and retail, there are hundreds of promising use cases for the emerging generation of enhanced connectivity. Together, advanced and frontier connectivity could help seven sectors add a total of $2 trillion to $3 trillion in additional value to global GDP.

Connected Streetlights Market: APAC to emerge as the leading adopter

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IoT Analytics, a leading provider of market insights & competitive intelligence for the Internet of Things (IoT), M2M, and Industry 4.0, today published a comprehensive Market Report, focusing on sizing the quickly developing market for Connected Streetlights during the period 2018 to 2023. It is estimated that there will be 41 million IoT connected Streetlights installed globally by 2023. The overall streetlights market will surpass US$3.6B in 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 21% from 2018. Deployment of connected streetlights is gaining traction globally as the technology is one of the key pillars for Smart City initiatives. The growth is fueled by government policies and increasing awareness on the benefits of connected Streetlights which go beyond energy savings.

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Circa 2001: the promise of machine-to-machine commerce

~ Bill Martin ~ Leave a comment

Back in 2001, I published a white paper under the banner of the SaaS solutions company I cofounded.  The white paper, titled Ten Things, addressed ten emerging dynamics that I saw as having significant promise in changing the way people would live and businesses would operate in the not so distant future.  One of the “Ten” was my take on the emergence of M2M and IoT.  I thought it would be interesting to share here for posterity’s sake.

Somewhere somebody has just purchased the last Caffeine-free Diet Coke from a Coke machine standing next to a building in downtown Chicago. It immediately sends a signal over the Internet to the regional bottling facility and the local distributor informing them of the outage, while also conveying the inventory levels of the other soft drinks in the machine. Simultaneously, it electroni- cally canvases its peer network of other Coke machines in its general geography and shows the availability on an interactive screen on its face to direct the next consumer to the closest machine with inventory.

Transparent machine-to-machine commerce activities such as this will soon become commonplace as the machines that make our lives easier continue to get smarter and more connected. As new technologies make the wires in existing electrical networks capable of transmitting voice and data, the traditional machines and appliances in our homes, workplaces and retail environments will increasingly communicate within private networks. And the more sophisticated machine-to-machine commerce becomes, the more intelligent the systems of business rules that underlie the decision- making will have to be. Refrigerators may not only reorder automatically to restock food and bever- age inventories in the kitchen, but also price compare using the desired market basket among multiple grocery suppliers. The residential home is both a power and compute grid with enormous potential to leverage and share those resources on a neighborhood or global basis. One hundred intelligent homes could potentially be networked together to share power usage information and make peer group decisions on how much power is needed, when it is needed, and how much excess could be sold spot market-style on the open market.

The potential of machine-to-machine commerce is virtually unlimited. The primary constraints are bandwidth, sophisticated software applications, and our own imaginations. Recent history demon- strates that where there is significant upside opportunity, entrepreneurs race in to create the solu- tions. As with all great ideas, the reality of machine-to-machine commerce is only a matter of time.