The Week In Review: IoT

Finance
Dublin-based Cubic Telecom has taken in €40 million (about $47.6 million) in Series C funding, bringing its total funding to €75 million (around $89.25 million). Audi Electronics Venture and Qualcomm are existing investors participating in the new round of funding, joined by new investors Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and Valid Soluciones Tecnologicas SAU. Cubic will use the money to refine its Internet of Things platform and extend its footprint around the world, while also hiring more engineers at the company’s headquarters.

Cybersecurity
Princeton University researchers report that Internet service providers can snoop on smart-home networks, gaining data from IoT devices that are protected by encryption. “We demonstrate that an ISP or other network observer can infer privacy-sensitive in-home activities by analyzing Internet traffic from smart homes containing commercially available IoT devices even when the devices use encryption,” the Princeton paper states.

Deals
Developing an IoT platform for smart manufacturing is the subject of a collaborative agreement between Mitsubishi Electric and Oracle. Mitsubishi has paired its new FA-IT Open Platform for factory automation with the Oracle Cloud.

ZingBox will work with VMware to provide greater security for enterprise IoT implementations. Gartner forecasts that more than 25% of identified cyberattacks on enterprises will involve IoT by 2020.

Ayla Networks completed a strategic cooperation agreement with China Unicom to work together on products and services for the smart home and other IoT markets. The technology partnership will also touch on artificial intelligence, connected cars, and smart hotels, among other applications.

Products
Freewave Technologies reports its FGR and FGR2 ruggedized IIoT data radios connect 28 sensors and devices in five remote weather stations run by the Mount Washington Observatory, providing real-time weather data. Mount Washington in New Hampshire has a summit at 6,288 feet above sea level and experiences harsh weather all year long. Established in 1932, the observatory has been using the Freewave radios for more than 13 years.

Great Bay Software this week brought out version 5.2 of its Beacon Product Suite, which offers enterprise-class device discovery, visibility, and control. Gartner predicts there will be 20.4 billion connected things by 2020, up from 8.4 billion IoT devices this year.

Telit’s ME910C1-NA LTE-M module is certified for operation on AT&T’s nationwide LTE-M network. The ME910C1-NA is a single-mode, tri-band module.

Market Research
Frost & Sullivan has a new analysis, Global IoT in Financial Services Market, 2017. “The increasing application of IoT within insurance and banking services is giving rise to new data-centric business models and innovative processes that help users launch novel products and services,” said Jean-Noël Georges, Frost & Sullivan’s Digital Transformation Global Program Director.

Transparency Market Research says the IoT fleet management market will enjoy a 20% compound annual growth rate in the coming years, reaching $15.87 billion by 2025, compared with $3.34 billion last year. Key companies in this field are AT&T, Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel, Omnitracs, Oracle, Sierra Wireless, TomTom International, Trimble, and Verizon Communications. The TMR report can be ordered here.

Persistence Market Research forecasts the worldwide IoT market will be worth more than $260 billion by 2025, marking a CAGR of 21.5%. North America will be the largest IoT market, representing about 38.5% of the global IoT market by 2025, while the Asia/Pacific region will see a slightly higher CAGR. IoT analytics and IoT sensors represent the majority of the IoT market this year. IoT data transport and IoT platforms will have a CAGR of more than 25%, PMR predicts. Smart grids and wearable computing devices will also post attractive growth. Their report can be ordered here.

Research and Markets says the IoT cloud platform market will experience a 31% CAGR over seven years, to 2023. Details on its report are here.