When Gartner released its inaugural Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms in May, it made a statement by positioning all of the 11 finalists in the bottom two quadrants. In other words, when it comes to the IIoT platform market, there are only “niche players” and “visionaries.” The IIoT platform market is still too immature to have “leaders” or “challengers.”

Now that the research and advisory firm has released its latest Magic Quadrant for Managed M2M Services, it is making another statement: While many vendors of such services have spurned the term “M2M” in favor of “IoT,” the former term is more accurate for companies primarily offering “connectivity, technology and technology services that facilitate key business processes and related outcomes,” Gartner analysts explain in the report. “The market for managed M2M services is very mature and doesn’t present the attention and buzz of IoT,” the Magic Quadrant document explains.

According to worldwide Google Trends data from 2004 to present, the use of the term “M2M” peaked in July 2004.

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Gartner has been publishing Magic Quadrants on the managed M2M market since 2014. Vodafone was the highest-ranked company in the latest roundup, earning the highest scores for both its vision and ability to execute. The company has consistently had a competitive in the ranking owing to its comprehensive geographical scope, diversified M2M experience and diverse service offerings.

Gartner has named Vodafone as a “leader” in its Magic Quadrant for Managed M2M Services since the report’s inception. In a press release, Vodafone referred back to its status as an IoT leader: “We believe Gartner’s placing of Vodafone in the Leaders quadrant recognises our exceptional track record and our unique position in the IoT landscape.”

Rounding out the “leaders” in the most-recent M2M ranking were Spain’s Teléfonica, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange Business Services and Verizon. AT&T and Teléfonica were essentially ranked neck and neck behind Vodafone. Gartner pointed out that AT&T had a growing international coverage network and roster of related services while Teléfonica can accommodate “complex contracts with significant amounts of service integration.”

Vodafone is no stranger to Gartner’s Magic Quadrants. For five years in a row, Vodafone was also named as a “visionary” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Managed Mobility Services. And this year, the company was ranked as a “challenger” in the Magic Quadrant for Network Services, Global. It also got a positive assessment in Gartner’s 2018 Vendor Rating, with a positive ranking in each of the six subcategories: products and services, support/account management, pricing, technology/methodology, strategy and corporate viability.

Also this year, Vodafone was named  Company of the Year by Frost & Sullivan for its Cloud Communications and Contact Center Services in Europe.

The company’s M2M business has also won high praise from the analyst firm Analysys Mason.

Despite the string of accolades in 2018 and in prior years, the company’s financial performance in 2018 has been less rosy. In the first six months of its financial year, which began in March, the company reported a loss of nearly 8 billion euros. The company’s stock performance, however, was recently buoyed following CEO Nick Read’s announcement of a plan to cut costs.