The number of active fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in Europe was 6.6 million in Q4 2016, according to a new research report from the M2M/IoT analyst firm Berg Insight.

Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.4%, this number is expected to reach 14.1 million by 2021.

The top-14 vendors have today more than 100,000 active units in Europe.

TomTom’s subscriber base has grown both organically and by acquisitions during the past few years and the company is now the clear market leader on the European market and reached an installed base of about 609,000 units at year-end 2016.

Masternaut is still in second place and had achieved an installed base of an estimated 300,000 units at the year-end.

Berg Insight ranks Microlise as the third largest player in terms of active installed base with around 210,000 units. Verizon (Fleetmatics and Telogis), ABAX, Teletrac Navman, Bornemann, Transics, Trimble, Gurtam, Targa Telematics, Viasat and OCEAN (Orange) also have more than 100,000 active devices in the field.

The HCV manufacturers are now growing their subscriber bases considerably in Europe thanks to standard line fitment of fleet management solutions. Dynafleet by Volvo, FleetBoard by Daimler and Scania Fleet Management are the most successful with active subscriber bases of 99,000 units, 99,000 units and 172,000 units respectively as of Q4-2016.

The consolidation trend on this market continued in 2017. “Ten major mergers and acquisitions have taken place in the past twelve months among the vendors of fleet management systems in Europe”, said Johan Fagerberg, senior analyst at Berg Insight.

Trakm8 acquired Roadsense Technology in August 2016. Roadsense is a supplier of fleet telematics and safety products in the UK.

In September, Fleetmatics (Verizon) acquired the Portugal-based fleet management provider Inosat, thus expanding the presence in Southern Europe and to some extent also South America. The acquisition of Inosat added around 50,000 vehicle subscriptions to Fleetmatics’ existing installed base.

Trackunit acquired German-based Dreyer+Timm in September 2016. Later in November, Fleetmatics (Verizon) announced the acquisition of Berlin-based TrackEasy, a fleet management software provider in Germany and Poland, adding approximately 15,000 vehicles to the installed base.

In January 2017, Viasat Group acquired MobileFleet (majority stake adding about 23,000 subscribers) and in February, Princip was acquired by WAG Payment Solutions which is among the six largest European providers of payment solutions for road mobility. Viasat Group continued its acquisition spree in May when buying ICOM in Bulgaria.

One of the largest transactions this year was when Investcorp acquired ABAX in June 2017. Investcorp paid NOK 1.8 billion (US$ 210 million), which translates to about US$ 1,000 per FM subscriber, while Isotrak acquired UK fleet management technology business VeriLocation in the same month.

The latest transaction was done in July when TIMKEN acquired Groeneveld Group that owns Groeneveld ICT Solutions.

Fagerberg anticipates that the market consolidation of the still overcrowded industry will continue in 2017–2018.

To download the report Fleet Management in Europe click here.

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