GSMA envisions an embedded future

The GSM Association is forecasting 50 billion connected devices on the market by 2025, which would mean that every individual would have approximately seven connected devices. That also means seven new revenue streams coming into service providers that stake a claim in the movement. Michael O'Mara, chief marketing officer for the GSMA, spoke with Telephony about the GSMA's Embedded Mobile initiative, launched last year, and the potential for service providers to move beyond voice and into devices everywhere.

On regional inspirations: The sorts of things we are floating around in Asia are little tags around kids to keep a location track of them; digital photo frames are very popular. We had a lovely embedded burglar alarm system that essentially you strap to the wall of your house, and if you have an intruder, you get a call on your mobile phone and can see the audio and video through your mobile device, which is embedded technology. You tend to see a lot of those interesting consumer applications in Asia. In the U.S. and Europe, it is a lot more around smart metering, cars, telemetry, an OnStar-style of service and how the operators can get involved in that play.

On hyper-connected consumers: I can see everyone having a camera, something in the car, MP3 players, embedded modules in your heart rate monitor right through to the meters — electricity and gas meters in the house. It's definitely possible to get into the 10s for SIMs per person, which leads to the 50 billion-connected number.

On the road ahead: We are right at the start of this. Operators have seen the potential of netbooks and mobile broadband and that capability. We have a global standard for the first kind; everyone has accepted that HSPA is the route we are going to go here. Now the job for is to bring the ecosystem along with us and get the technology spread across all these verticals. They haven't had that possibility before, so it's really a case of getting standardization and kick-starting interest, bringing together the communities. I think it's a win-win for everyone.