Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections are set grow from one billion in 2010 to 12 billion in 2020, according to Machina Research.

There will be 2.3 billion wireless wide area network connections by 2010. Mobile network operators can expect to take EUR 40 billion ($56 billion approx) of the EUR 714 billion ($991 billion approx) M2M market in 2020.

“M2M is as diverse as the business sectors that it serves,” said Jim Morrish, the author of the report, in a statement. “Each and every one of the hundreds of applications that we’ve analyzed has different dynamics.”

“It’s only by looking at each application individually that you can hope to either forecast the market opportunity, as we have, or address the connectivity requirements, as the throngs of device manufacturers, service providers, network operators and systems integrators will hope to do,” Morrish added.

Accounting for half of all global data connections, connections will be dominated by two sectors: consumer electronics and intelligent buildings.

Europe will be the biggest region for M2M, accounting for 28 percent of connections by 2010. The biggest single markets will be the China and the U.S. with 21 percent and 20 percent respectively, company officials said.

More than 70 percent of M2M devices will be connected by short-range technologies, mostly WiFi (News - Alert). Wireless cellular technologies dominate the balance.

At the end of 2010 M2M accounted for 2 percent of cellular connections. By 2020 this will reach 19 percent, or 2.3 billion connections.

M2M will grow from EUR 91 billion ($126 billion approx) in 2010 to EUR 714 billion ($991 billion approx) in 2020. Europe will be generating revenue of over EUR 200 billion ($278 billion approx) in 2020. The U.S. is the largest individual country with over EUR 150 billion ($208 billion approx) revenue, followed by China with over EUR 110 billion.

Recently, a TMCnet report said that the M2M embedded module market’s performance was less than anticipated for 2011. The module industry earned only about $500 million in the first half of the year. This is largely due to an increase in the speed of ASP decline in the industry.