Mark Bridge writes:

This time of year sees many pundits from within the mobile industry doing their best to predict events that’ll grab headlines in the next 12 months. In fact, we’ll be offering our own predictions in a couple of special podcasts lined up in the next few days.

Berg Insight has calculated that the number of smart electricity meters installed across the USA and Canada will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.5% between 2010 and 2016, reaching 87.4 million in five years.

This means that smart meter penetration among residential electricity customers in North America will have increased from around 20% now to more than 50% by the end of 2016. By 2020, approaching 100% smart meter penetration is expected.

In five years' time, smart metering will account for over 40% of the 400 million machine-to-machine connections around the world. That's the prediction of a new Juniper Research report.

Although M2M smart meters don't make as much money per connection as other M2M segments, Juniper says the volume of smart meter deployment will means it's still an important revenue stream.

A new research report from Berg Insight says the number of smart electricity meters in Europe will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.4% for the next five years to reach 130.5 million in 2016. That means 52% of European houses will have smart meters.

By this time, over €3 billion per year is expected to be spent on smart metering technology.

Telefónica O2 UK has signed its first 'smart metering' agreement, a multi-million pound three-year contract with G4S Utility Services.

O2 will provide around 200,000 SIM cards and other machine-to-machine technology to connect smart meters to the G4S data centre. Information will be sent via text message to and from G4S.