The Week In Review: IoT

Legislation
Four senators plan to introduce a bipartisan bill that would require federal government vendors to provide Internet-connected devices and equipment that is patchable and conforms to industry cybersecurity standards. Such products must not have unchangeable passwords or known security vulnerabilities. The bill was drafted with expert advice from the Atlantic Council and Harvard University. Similar legislation is expected to be introduced in the House of Representatives.

Tools
Samsung Electronics this week introduced the Samsung ARTIK Cloud Monetization for the Internet of Things, a cloud-based tool to help IoT device developers and service providers build revenue from their IoT data. “The problem with IoT is that many hardware companies are selling products without a clear view on sustainable business models. There’s a lot of pressure now to monetize data,” Dilip Sarangan of Frost & Sullivan said in a statement.

M&A
GE Digital has acquired IQP Corporation, an Israeli-Japanese startup that offers an Industrial IoT application development environment that doesn’t require writing software code. The purchase price reportedly ranges between $30 million and $40 million. Fujitsu, an IQP customer, has invested $6 million in the startup. Other customers include Motorola and Toyota Motor.

Startups
Coming out of stealth mode this week, zGlue is touting its approach to less expensive 2.5D chip stacking for IoT applications. The startup has developed the zGlue Smart Fabric interposer for stacked-chip packaging and offers an IoT platform with building blocks for designing and manufacturing IoT products. BOE Technology Group is working with zGlue as a customer, investor, and ecosystem partner; the Mountain View, Calif.-based zGlue plans to open an office in Shanghai this month.

Wia Technologies, provider of an IoT cloud platform, has received €750,000 (nearly $889,000) in seed funding led by Suir Valley Ventures, with a contribution by Enterprise Ireland. The Dublin-based startup will use the money to gain global adoption of its cloud platform, which is said to turn any sensing device into a secure application in minutes.

Market Research
The worldwide Industrial IoT market will be worth $783.88 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.7% from now to 2025, according to Transparency Market Research. Manufacturing will account for nearly 35% of the IIoT market in that period, while health care will lead in terms of its growth rate, TMR forecasts. Key players in IIoT are ABB, Accenture, Emerson Electric, General Electric, IBM, Intel, and Schneider Electric. Go here to request a sample of the TMR report.

Asset tracking IoT devices are in for prosperous growth in the next five years, Mobile Experts says, predicting annual shipments will increase from 22 million units in 2016 to 70 million units by 2022. Around half of those devices will transmit data through a cloud-based service, growing service revenue for cloud providers from $2.2 billion last year to $7.5 billion in 2022. Details available here.