Description

The United Kingdom and Ireland together constitute the largest and most mature commercial vehicle telematics market in Europe, and they are served by numerous international and local telematics companies. The market is fiercely competitive with participation from well-established international players and equally competitive local TSPs. About one in three light-, medium-, and heavy-duty commercial vehicles in the United Kingdom and Ireland uses some sort of telematics solutions. The ratio is only estimated to increase as fleet management solutions are becoming more and more common among fleet operators and owners.

An estimated 5.03 million commercial vehicles in the United Kingdom and Ireland are serving different transportation needs catering to industries from construction, transport and logistics, oil and gas, utilities, rental and leasing, municipalities and local governments as of 2018. Telematics penetration was estimated to be 1.510 million units, which bring the penetration rate to 30% in 2018, the highest in Europe.

Just like any other market, the telematics market in this region must face its own challenges and merits. Despite universal challenges, such as driver shortages, justification on ROI, security concerns and local challenges specific to geographic locations (e.g., Brexit, GDPR regulations, decrease in foreign investments and technological challenges like multiple technology platforms), the telematics market is known to grow at a steady pace. This is in part due to the resilience that this market shows with promising optimizing fleet operations, fuel savings and thereby reducing operating costs. The technology enables fleet managers and operators to bring full visibility of their fleets and offers the ability to manage and control the entire fleet with a few clicks.

Leading telematics service providers in the UK and Irish market include Microlise, TomTom Telematics, Masternaut, Teletrac Navman, Verizon, Trimble, Trackm8, Ctrack, Isotrak, MiX Telematics, Astrata, Transpoco, Blue Tree Systems, and other local market participants. OEMs play a major part in the telematics scenario as well. Through in-house telematics systems and through partnerships, OEMs like Daimler (Fleetboard), Volvo (Dynafleet), Scania, MAN and DAF are offering fully fledged telematics solutions in the market. They have already started to include their telematics solutions as a standard factory-fit unit to select models and soon are expected to standardize telematics solutions across all models.

Although the commercial vehicle telematics market is highly fragmented in UK & Ireland, top 3 companies managed to accumulate an astounding 49% market share by the end of 2017 with OEMs contributing an additional 12.7% to the market share. Competition and contribution does not stop with TSPs and OEMs but extends across a wide value chain with companies from different domains entering the market to capture a share.

UK & Ireland is found to be on a growing curve in terms of new telematics companies and in terms of growing demand for telematics solutions. This study will provide a comprehensive outlook on the UK and Irish CV telematics market and will provide meaningful insights to companies who wish to venture in or expand into this competitive-yet-rewarding market.