Technical Insight
Aftermarket Telematics The Real Revolution yet to Begin FEROZ REHMAN
Transight Systems Pvt. Ltd
A
ftermarket telematics, as its name suggest is a Telematics Solution which gets retrofitted by the Vehicle Owner primly for vehicle tracking, fuel monitoring, driver monitoring etc. Hence its done purely based on an actual need and not just a feature coming fitted in a vehicle. The Aftermarket telematics got its significance in the early 2000s when Big Fleet companies, large Oil and Mining Corporations made it mandatory to track their vehicles. Earlier, it was just to ensure the security of passengers as well as checking speed limits in big campuses and oil fields. Later, the product evolved and were tailor made according to the variety of requirements of individual customers and industries. This paved the way for much wider penetration of the product into smaller Fleets. The evolution of industry has been so rapid that the quantum of data captured from vehicles has changed from simple locations and speed to the minute of its detail including engine parameters, fuel economy and even the exact information of the cargo being transported. Generally, aftermarket telematics solutions are implemented by local system integrators or dealers. Hence every time a customer brings up a different use case, SIs are ready to tweak their software by adding different features like new dashboards and reports. In many cases, hardware customisations are also implemented by integrating different type of sensors to the main unit; fuel, temperature, humidity, light, contact, pressure, weight, and tyre, to name a few The addressable market for aftermarket telematics solutions is significant. At the end of 2019 just before pandemic, there were an estimated 1.12 billion passenger cars and
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light trucks registered worldwide. Even though aftermarket car telematics services face competition from smartphone- only solutions and OEM solutions, it is noted that the aftermarket telematics market is in a phase of strong growth. In a recent study report published by Berg Insights, it is estimated that total shipments of aftermarket telematics systems reached almost 24.7 million units worldwide in 2019. Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 14.4 percent, the shipments are expected to reach 48.5 million units in 2024. The number of aftermarket car telematics systems in active use is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.6 percent from 77.1 million in 2019 to 152.1 million worldwide in 2024. The penetration rate will at the same time grow from 6.4 percent in 2019 to 11.1 percent at the end of the forecast period. Stolen vehicle recovery and securityrelated telematics applications are mature aftermarket car telematics applications whereas other direct-to-consumer car telematics solutions have more recently started to emerge. Regional market conditions such as a high level of vehicle crime influence the demand for stolen vehicle tracking and have made SVT solutions popular in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, China, Israel, Russia and South Africa. The number of dedicated active aftermarket SVT units in use is forecasted to reach 68.6 million in 2024, up from 47.1 million at year-end 2019.
Challenges and Competition As the market and demand grows for Telematics, its not just contributing to Aftermarket segments, OEMs and Smart Phone options are also equally emerging in the same way. However, the Aftermarket
options make its value proposition distinct to others and hence it has build a different segment with its unique advantages OEM Fitted and Aftermarket Since the dawn of m2m revolution, it has become a priority for the OEMs also to have their part in Telematics, Volvos and Daimlers were the pioneers to add it to their vehicles. Volvo Dynafleet is an extensive and comprehensive solution, which captures even the minutest data from their vehicles and brings intelligent analytics out of it. But now even simple scooters have become connected! They give their best information to the owners through a concise mobile application. However, in a bigger picture this will not suffice the actual Telematics requirements of a Fleet Manager or an Organisation who really wants to use it efficiently. Prime reasons being ● Almost all major fleet companies and organisations operate multi-brand fleet. Hence its not possible to get everything under one umbrella. In simple words, Volvos doesn’t want to share their info to Daimler platform or even to a third party fleet management software. So, if a company with 5 different branded vehicles have to use 5 software platforms, which becomes really difficult to get meaningful reports and analysis out of it. ● After sales service and support is also a big challenge for OEM Telematics. For each and every support cases, customers need to bring the vehicle to dealerships and in many cases a dealer doesn’t have a proper service support team to solve customers queries about telematics software. On the other hand, aftermarket guys would be at your door steps for any service support and many cases they are ready to travel to remote locations where
