Romanian M2M market shows promise

The Central and Eastern European (CEE) M2M market has long since been identified as having massive potential for growth by industry experts and research houses. To date, country-specific reports on the CEE region have typically focused on Poland, but recently there has been a spate of activity in Romania’s M2M and IoT markets that suggest the country’s broader IoT market is poised for rapid growth.
Romania is one the fastest growing economies in Europe with annual GDP growth at 3.5% at the end of 2013. Research house, Machina Research, expects the Romanian M2M market to grow rapidly between 2015-2020; cellular-connected devices are forecast to grow fivefold from 1.56m to 7.84m whilst the value of the M2M market is expected to grow from €1,14bn to €3.12bn.
At the end of January, Orange Romania launched M2M Control, a platform that enables companies to monitor and manage their fleet of M2M SIMs. The platform enables users to check their connected devices around the world and access detailed information including the devices’ position through network localisation as well as a graphic representation of them on a map. The functions of the platform can also be integrated into companies’ internal applications through custom APIs.
In mid-March, it was announced that Romanian IoT startup, DeviceHub.net will receive €80,000 funding from hub:raum Krakow, Deutsche Telekom’s Innovation Hub for the CEE region. The company will also receive hub:raum Krakow’s mentors, and access to a market of 150 million Deutsche Telekom Group customers across Europe. DeviceHub.net provides cloud services for Internet of Things communication and can be integrated with any kind of hardware, and is specially designed for smart metering, fleet management, medical industry, home automation, automotive and wearables.
At the end of March, Romanian mobile devices distributor QuickMobile announced that it will expand its offer of smart devices that bring the IoT to Romanian homes. The new category of products will include IoT-based devices controllable from mobile such as connected thermostats, smart surveillance and monitoring systems for pets. QuickMobile will also extend their range of connected health and fitness products, which have so far, proven to be very well received by consumers in Romania.
On April 8th, Romania’s Government approved through a decision the ‘National strategy for the Digital Agenda for Romania – 2020’ that redefines the countrie’s digital strategy, including the issues of interoperability and cloud computing. According to telecompaper, the strategy’s direct and indirect impact on the economy can be translated into a 13 per cent GDP growth, increasing  employment by 11 per cent, and reducing the administration’s costs by 12 per cent in 2014-2020.