According to a recent report from ABI Research, Cellular M2M module shipments are expected to exceed 114 million in 2015. The figure already crossed the 28 million mark last year, says ABI.

"Not so long ago, it appeared likely that M2M would be making liberal use of the EDGE cellular air interface standard," says practice director Sam Lucero. "However, market data suggests that EDGE has not become the technology of choice for many M2M vendors."

EDGE is a 2.5G technology and operates in the same frequency bands as GSM/GPRS, but with greater spectral efficiency and lower cost. This makes it ideal for M2M applications. More so, because many M2M use cases don't require 3G speeds and bandwidth and not all carriers have 3G spectrum licenses,

Despite these advantages, the adoption of EDGE remains limited. "Module shipment data since 2003 shows no significant adoption of EDGE in the M2M market. After many years of only nominal shipments, ABI Research (News - Alert) must now conclude that EDGE will likely never gain traction in the future," adds Lucero.

Application developers are largely either staying with the GSM/GPRS standard where bandwidth or future-proofing are not prime considerations, or are shifting directly to WCDMA in cases where they are.

ABI Research attributes this lack of interest in EDGE to the cost-sensitivity of developers. Another possible reason seems to be the growing concern over future-proofing. In addition, EDGE fails to address concerns over GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks being "turned off" in favor of 3G/4G at some point within the deployed life-span of M2M applications.

The only areas where the adoption of EDGE seems to have picked up are commercial telematics and consumer OEM telematics, as well as fixed wireless terminals and industrial PDAs.

ABI Research's report titled "M2M Market Forecasts" assesses the M2M market on the basis of wireless WAN embedded modules and product revenue, as w ell as wireless WAN active nodes and service revenue.

According to an earlier TMCnet article, ABI Research had found out that before 2008, cellular M2M module shipments increased more than 25 percent per year, and in 2007, module shipment growth peaked at 45 percent.