Fleet telematics in South Africa is in a growth period which will continue in the years to come, according to Berg Insight. The number of fleet management telematics systems in active use is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.8% from 900,000 units in 2015 to 1.5 million by 2020. The penetration rate in the total population of non-privately owned fleet vehicles used by businesses is at the same time estimated to increase from 21.5% in 2015 to 32.5% in 2020. South Africa is a relatively mature telematics market and the penetration is comparably high from an international perspective.

Far from all deployments are however full-scale advanced FM solutions. A notable share of the installed fleet telematics systems in the South African market is represented by comparably low-end tracking systems, e.g. light fleet management solutions, including SVR systems extended with basic fleet management features, according to Berg Insight.

The South African fleet management telematics market is dominated by five players with broad telematics portfolios, which are all headquartered in the country and have installed bases of more than 100,000 telematics units. Berg Insight ranks MiX Telematics as the largest provider of fleet management solutions in South Africa with an estimated installed base of around 150,000 active units in the country. The runner-up is Cartrack followed by Altech Netstar and DigiCore (Ctrack). Tracker has also provided more than 100,000 active fleet management systems in the country, out of which a share is represented by solutions powered by TomTom Telematics. Other international providers active on the market include Pointer Telocation and Geotab.

Foreign telematics players have, however, generally not managed to achieve any significant market shares on the South African fleet management market so far, according to Berg Insight.

Additional examples of domestic aftermarket players include GPS Tracking Solutions (Eqstra Fleet Management), Global Telematics (Pointer SA), Autotrak, ACM Track and Digit Vehicle Tracking. Commercial vehicle OEMs, including Daimler, Scania, Volvo Group and MAN, have moreover introduced fleet telematics solutions in South Africa, though the adoption levels generally remain relatively modest so far, according to Berg Insight.