@ Sprint Developer Conference: Positioning for a $1.1B M2M business

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) is making sure to embrace developers at every turn at its 10th annual developer conference here this week. Paget Alves, president of the carrier’s business markets group, hit on that theme early on today.
“We’re only as good as the partnerships we have,” he said. “We can’t do any of this without the participation of folks in this room.”
Sprint’s expanding WiMAX network, M2M and Sprint ID are the carrier’s biggest priorities going into 2011 and much of the focus today is on enterprise, he said.
“We need to make sure we address each vertical (market’s) needs,” Alves continued.
Danny Bowman, president of Sprint’s integrated solutions group, followed up with more detail about Sprint’s push into M2M. Culminating today with the opening of its new M2M Collaboration Center in Burlingame, Calif., Sprint has at least 600 engineers working on M2M solutions today, Bowman said.
“I’ve never been so excited about what is going to happen in 2011… There is so much tremendous growth in M2M,” he added. “I want to motivate and inspire you to open your mind to limitless possibilities.”
Indeed, following this morning’s trio of keynotes the interest in M2M was on clear display at an absolutely packed session on the future of M2M. Attendees lined the walls and spilled out into the hallways to hear Wayne Ward, VP of emerging solutions, talk about the variety of M2M deployments that Sprint is powering today and working to improve down the line.
At the end of 2009 there were 87 million embedded mobile M2M connections and the space is expected to reach 428 million installations by 2014, Bowman said. By 2013, M2M is expected to be a $1.1 billion business, he added.