Gothenburg, Sweden – July 12, 2011: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the installed base of smart electricity meters in Europe will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.4 percent between 2010 and 2016 to reach 130.5 million at the end of the period. Annual investments in smart metering technology are forecasted to exceed € 3 billion by the mid-2010s. Smart meters help consumers better manage their energy usage and create financial incentives for energy savings. Moreover they constitute the core building blocks in future smart grids that will support electric vehicle charging, renewable micro-generation and advanced energy conservation.

Following major rollouts in Italy and the Nordic region, smart meters are now being introduced on a massive scale in Spain, France and the UK. “Endesa has commenced with a rollout to 12.9 million customers in Spain and the second largest electricity network operator Iberdrola will follow”, said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst, Berg Insight. “ERDF is awaiting formal approval from the government for a nationwide rollout to 33 million customers in France and in the UK the leading energy suppliers British Gas and E.ON have committed to the deployment of several million smart meters prior to the start of a mass rollout in 2014. By that time there will also be massive installations in additional countries such as the Netherlands, Ireland and Norway”.

For the first time, there are also plans for major smart metering projects in Central Eastern Europe. CEZ in the Czech Republic and Energa in Poland have announced large scale pilots as the first step towards full-scale installations. Energa has the most advanced plan to achieve full coverage for smart meters among its 3 million electricity customers by 2017.

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
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E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
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Gothenburg, Sweden – July 1, 2011: According to a new research report by Berg Insight, the number of new smart home installations worldwide was 0.44 million in 2010. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 65 percent, this number is expected to reach 5.38 million by 2015. The total revenues will simultaneously grow at a CAGR of 32.8 percent from US$ 2.3 billion in 2010 to almost US$ 9.5 billion in 2015.

Smart homes and connected home technologies have been around for decades, but up till recently, this has been a niche segment either for the very affluent or extreme technophiles. “Things are changing for this industry due to a perfect confluence of market, regulatory, strategic and technology trends”, according to the report’s lead analyst Alan A. Varghese. “First is the pull from consumers in the mobile age, who desire to use products such as iPhones and iPads to control their lifestyles through user-friendly interfaces. The regulatory drivers come from governments, whereby countries and utilities are mandated to better control the generation, distribution and consumption of power in residences. The strategic push comes from new entrants such as broadband providers who are already inside consumers’ homes and are looking for the next opportunities to increase ARPU, reduce churn and become complete solution providers. Finally the technology piece is coming together with increasing focus on interoperability, even as the cost of modules, chipsets, and software is trending down”, says Varghese.

There is an increasing shift in smart home technology adoption from custom and luxury residences to mainstream and production homes. Whereas only 0.1 percent of mainstream homes had any form of automation in 2010, almost 4 percent will have that by 2015. Furthermore, since new housing construction is in a slump worldwide, vendors are focusing their attention on retrofit of existing housing stock, and easy-to-deploy technologies such as wireless. Berg Insight finds that this market will soon be crowded with dealer-installers from traditional industries such as security service providers, as well as new entrants such as broadband, wireless and utilities service providers, so finding the right partnerships, business models and pricing is key to success.

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
Twitter: www.twitter.com/berginsight

Junifer Systems, the global provider of leading back office solutions for the utility industry, has been selected after a competitive tendering process to provide its flagship Utility CIS to E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business.

Junifer Systems’ Utility CIS is a modular end-to-end customer information and billing system designed specifically to support the unique challenges encountered by both legacy utility systems and the new requirements resulting from industry wide „Smart Meter‟ rollout programmes. The system has the capability to process „Smart Meter‟ consumption records as soon as they are presented to the system. The Junifer Utility CIS platform enables the Utility to offer innovative products, provide its customers with a better understanding of their energy consumption and ultimately help to reduce their carbon footprint.
The Junifer Systems Utility CIS implementation at E.ON will consolidate multiple systems, automate existing manual processes, provide an integrated accounts receivables and collections capability and provide extensive management reports.

Paul FitzGerald, Sales & Marketing Director for Junifer Systems said: “Our scaleable, Utility CIS platform will receive information from E.ON’s smart meters on a daily basis and process the data immediately – this will provide E.ON customer care staff with a single and timely view of all information related to their customers. We are delighted that E.ON recognised the added value that could be accrued through use of the Junifer Utility CIS platform.”

Jeremy Bungey, Head of Community Energy in E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business, said: “What impressed us most about Junifer Systems was that their software is developed specifically to meet the dynamic needs of the utility industry. Junifer’s Utility CIS was very user friendly and from the first live demonstration we could see exactly how it would work within our business. Our customer services team envisages real benefits from the system’s data collection, billing, CRM and ticketing capabilities.”
E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business will be using Junifer’s Utility CIS to manage the delivery of its many large-scale decentralised energy projects across new build sites such as Maple Quay and Dalston Square in East London.

Decentralised energy is produced close to where it will be used, reducing transmission losses and lowering carbon emissions. Long term, it can offer competitive, stable pricing. For house builders, decentralised energy is the cost-effective means of achieving the mandatory Code for Sustainable Homes targets.

About Junifer Systems
Headquartered in London, Junifer Systems provides complete Customer Information Systems (CIS) to the utility industry, specialising in billing systems for Smart Meter deployments. For more details please visit www.junifersystems.com

Media Contact:
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Tria Nomina
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E: lindsay.spencer@trianomina.com

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in North America was 2.1 million in Q4-2010. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.6 percent, this number is expected to reach 3.8 million by 2015. In Latin America, the number of installed fleet management systems is expected to increase from 0.9 million in Q4-2010, growing at a CAGR of 20.6 percent to reach 2.3 million in 2015. Fleet management vendors such as Qualcomm, XATA and PeopleNet remain largely focused on the high-end trucking segment. Non-trucking segments such as delivery, utility and service are addressed by another group of vendors including FleetMatics, Networkfleet and Wireless Matrix. The high-end vendors tend to offer customized solutions via a consultative sales process, whereas others adopt indirect sales models based on distributors, solution sellers and integrators, and offer more standardized solutions.

The report cites customer awareness of the benefits of telematics as the main driver behind growth. “Today managers in North America generally know that fleet management technology can help their businesses reduce costs and improve efficiency. In Latin America, an educational process may however be needed in order to increase the awareness among prospective users about the benefits that fleet management solutions bring beyond mere security related features”, said Rickard Andersson, Telecom Analyst, Berg Insight.

New regulations related to road transport activities also have a major impact on the market environment. The recently implemented CSA safety scoring system in the US to identify high-risk motor carriers requiring interventions is one example. The hours-of-service regulations are further being revised and a mandate to use electronic on-board recorders to log working hours for truckers is likely to come in place starting in 2012 for new vehicles to eventually include all commercial vehicles. In Brazil, the mandated installation of tracking units in all new vehicles is also an important influencer of the development in this region.

About Berg InsightBerg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets increased almost 97 percent in 2010 to 295 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.8 percent, shipments are forecasted to reach 940 million units in 2015. The attach rates for wireless connectivity technologies in handsets including GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN are increasing steadily as the adoption of smartphones accelerates. These connectivity technologies are already a standard feature on high-end smartphones. Adoption of GPS and WLAN will also increase rapidly in the medium- and low-end smartphone segments.

The attach rate for WLAN connectivity in handsets reached 20 percent in 2010. Berg Insight forecasts shipments of WLAN-enabled handsets to reach 900 million in 2015. “There are numerous compelling use cases for WLAN in mobile phones, ranging from offloading data traffic from increasingly congested mobile networks to media synchronisation and hybrid navigation services”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “Hybrid navigation technologies are necessary to enable reliable positioning indoors. New multi-mode GPS receivers that also support the Russian GLONASS satellite system are already available in handsets. When using the two systems in combination, more visible satellites will increase the chance to receive sufficiently strong signals to get a fix in urban canyons”. He adds that further performance increases will come from hybrid location technologies that fuse signal measurements from multiple satellite systems, cellular networks and WLAN, together with data from various forms of sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and altimeters.

Starting in the second half of 2011, more handsets supporting the Near Field Communication (NFC) standard for short-range wireless point-to-point communication will also become available. When deployed in mobile phones, NFC can be used for countless applications such as information exchange, electronic ticketing and mobile payments. Shipments of NFC-enabled handsets are forecasted to increase from less than two million units in 2010 to 400 million units in 2015.

About Berg InsightBerg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
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E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
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Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global shipments of smartphones increased 74 percent in 2010 to 295 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.4 percent, shipments are forecasted to reach 1,200 million units in 2015. The global user base of smartphones increased at the same time by 38 percent year-on-year to an estimated 470 million active users in 2010. In the next five years, the global user base of smartphones is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42.9 percent to reach 2.8 billion in 2015. Smartphones are receiving more attention from handset manufacturers, network operators and application developers. Most importantly, an increasing number of users are now discovering how smartphones can act as personal computing devices enabling access to the mobile web and applications, besides voice and text services. Although high-end devices tend to get most attention, the primary growth will come from medium- and low-end smartphones.

“Chipset developers and handset vendors are working on technologies that will ensure a good user experience also for low cost smartphones”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “The challenge is to develop a handset with enough memory, graphics performance and processing power to run the operating system with multiple applications while ensuring a responsive system with fluid user interface and still keep costs down”. He adds that smartphones in general will also benefit from advancements in chipset design. In the next five years, further performance increases will come from dual- or quad-core application and graphics processors. These new processors will enable smartphones to rival the performance of dedicated gaming consoles and notebook computers. At the same time, new user interfaces will be developed that make better use of sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes as well as cameras to detect movement or gestures without the need to touch the display.

About Berg InsightBerg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report from Berg Insight, the worldwide number of shipped consumer electronics devices with cellular connectivity grew to 22 million in 2010 compared to 11 million in the previous year. Notebooks is still the most common device category to equip with cellular connectivity but tablets, e-readers and PNDs are fast growing categories as well. In the next five years, shipments of connected consumer electronics devices are forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 65.2 percent to reach 271 million in 2015.

“The sheer availability of affordable devices with embedded connectivity has exploded during the last year with substantial price reductions on connected personal navigation devices and popular e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook”, says Johan Svanberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that the Apple iPad caused the market for Internet tablets to take off and there were 17.1 million tablets sold worldwide in 2010 out of which 3.9 million have cellular connectivity. Heightened consumer awareness, decreasing prices of modules and chipsets together with massive global deployments of high speed cellular networks such as LTE will have a great positive impact on the market. “However, there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to wireless data subscriptions and a great deal of business innovation is needed in order to make embedded cellular connectivity a common feature in consumer devices”, added Mr. Svanberg.

About Berg InsightBerg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Gothenburg, Sweden: Preliminary data from Berg Insight show that the worldwide number of mobile network connections used for wireless M2M (machine-to-machine) communication reached 81.4 million at the end of 2010, up 46 percent year-on-year. According to Tobias Ryberg the strong market performance was the result of a stronger focus on M2M applications in the mobile communications industry and the rise of wirelessly enabled consumer products. The US and Japan recorded growth rates of 52 percent and 60 percent respectively, mainly driven by connected devices such as e-book readers and digital photo frames. Among the world regions, Europe maintained its number one position as the number of M2M subscribers increased 43 percent to 29.5 million. North America was up 51 percent to 23.6 million, followed by Asia-Pacific, growing by 53 percent to 19.6 million.

According to Berg Insight’s M2M subscriber data estimates, AT&T became the world’s largest provider of wireless M2M connectivity services last year, reporting 9.3 million subscribers in Q4-2010. The US operator added 4.7 million machines and consumer devices with embedded connectivity during 2010, almost doubling its subscriber base. Meanwhile the previous market leader Verizon Wireless was demoted to second place in the US and worldwide reporting 8.1 million M2M subscribers at end of 2010, despite adding 1.2 million connections over the year. Berg Insight estimates that Vodafone, which does not currently disclose its number of M2M subscribers, ranked third having in the range of 7–8 million connections. China Mobile was estimated to be in the fourth place with around 6 million connections, followed by T-Mobile at approximately 5 million. Telefónica, Telenor, Orange, Sprint and America Móvil were other top ten players with 2–4 million connections each.

About Berg InsightBerg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Gothenburg, Sweden – December 22, 2010: According to new a research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, 2.0 percent of the mobile network connections worldwide were used for wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) communication at the end of 2010. The number of M2M subscribers increased by 46 percent year-on-year to an estimated 81.4 million. In the next five years, the total number of wireless M2M connections is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.0 percent to reach 294.1 million connections in 2015. By that year of the period M2M as a share of the total number of cellular connections is projected to reach 4.0 percent.

“M2M and connected devices is now one of the main drivers behind the growth in mobile subscribers in Europe and North America”, said Tobias Ryberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “All of the world’s largest telecom operators now have several million M2M subscribers in their mobile networks. In Q1-2011, we expect that AT&T will become the first mobile operators to reach 10 million M2M subscribers after more than doubling the installed base in the past 12 months, largely thanks to a successful strategy for connected consumer electronics devices.”

According to Mr. Ryberg, mobile operators are facing a new market landscape where customers no longer have one or two mobile subscriptions, but up to five or more different wireless devices. Besides his smartphone and tablet, a technology-savvy American is likely to own an e-reader and a connected PND, drive a car with an embedded telematics system and have a cellular security alarm installed at home. His Scandinavian compatriot could have a smart electricity meter with embedded GPRS connectivity; a Frenchman may use a cellular speed control warning system and an Italian might have installed a car telematics device from his insurance company. Mr. Ryberg concludes that these are some glimpses of the future that will come and predicts that the vast majority of the world’s next five billion mobile connections will be embedded into consumer devices, machines and sensors.

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Gothenburg, Sweden – December 21, 2010: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the global market for home health monitoring of welfare diseases was worth approximately € 7.6 billion in 2010. Some of the most common conditions being monitored today are chronic diseases including diabetes, cardiac arrhythmia, sleep apnea, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These conditions cause substantial costs and reduce both life expectancy and quality of life. Berg Insight estimates that more than 200 million people in the EU and the US suffer from one or several chronic diseases where home monitoring can become a treatment option.

mHealth is a term for healthcare practice supported by electronic processes and communication using mobile phones or cellular network technologies. It is a very broad term that principally involves every kind of mobile health related communication, application or data service. The report covers home health monitoring involving patient self-testing using medical devices and remote transmission of the medical data to healthcare providers for disease management. “Progress is being made in the adoption of wireless technology among manufacturers of medical monitoring equipment, but there is still a long way to go before remote monitoring becomes a standard practise in the healthcare sector”, says André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that consumer-oriented health and wellness monitoring will drive the mHealth segment in the near term. A growing number of wellness and medical monitors can be connected to a mobile phone via Bluetooth or other short-range technologies. More and more health and wellness apps are also being released for smartphones, ranging from BMI calculators, diet guides and sport trackers to medical reference apps. “The number of apps focusing on chronic disease management is however still relatively low”, commented Mr Malm.

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91