Berg Insight estimates that the global installed base of active off-highway vehicle telematics systems reached 4.4 million units in 2019.
This includes connected units deployed on various off-highway vehicles across the construction, mining, agriculture and forestry sectors. The construction sector accounts for the largest share, driven by OEM telematics systems offered by heavy equipment manufacturers. Agriculture and mining moreover each account for a similar number of connected units deployed on machines and vehicles used in agricultural and mining operations respectively. The remainder is represented by the forestry sector including telematics systems fitted to various forestry equipment. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.4 percent, the active installed base of off-highway vehicle telematics systems is forecasted to reach 9.0 million units worldwide in 2024.
Rickard Andersson, Principal Analyst, Berg Insight, said:
“The top-10 equipment manufacturers offering telematics together account for more than 75 percent of the total number of off-highway vehicle telematics systems in use across the construction, mining, agriculture and forestry sectors globally.”
Berg Insight ranks Caterpillar and Komatsu as the leading off-highway vehicle telematics providers. “Far from surprising, the leading equipment manufacturers by market share are also by far the top players when it comes to the number of off-highway vehicle telematics subscribers”, said Mr. Andersson. He adds that this is a natural development in an industry where telematics has increasingly been included as standard with the machine purchase, gradually covering more models and equipment categories. “Caterpillar was the first player to reach the milestone of 1 million connected assets”, continued Mr. Andersson.
Other major manufacturers with installed bases of more than 100,000 units include JCB, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Deere & Company, SANY, Volvo Construction Equipment and Doosan.
“Additional players having estimated installed bases of off-highway vehicle telematics units in the tens of thousands include Liebherr, CNH Industrial, CLAAS Group, Hyundai Construction Equipment, Tadano, AGCO and JLG Industries”, concluded Mr. Andersson.
Several players make use of telematics data to improve customer service. Volvo Construction Equipment, Deere & Company, Hyundai Construction Machinery and JCB have all launched centralised services for monitoring of customer machine fleets, commonly branded as machine monitoring centres or uptime centres. Such centres are typically manned by data experts continuously analysing the aggregate machine information in order to help customers increase productivity and reduce costs by identifying issues and solving problems proactively.
The incorporation of smart solutions using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data technologies in off-highway equipment can substantially impact worksites and industry structure. Also relatively straightforward applications such as over-the-air (OTA) service updates can drastically reduce the need for field service with positive effects on personnel needs and associated costs.
