The Week in Review: IoT

Acquisitions
ASSA ABLOY has agreed to acquire August Home, a startup providing home security products; the purchase price wasn’t revealed. August Home, which raised $75 million in private funding, should fit well with the Scandinavian conglomerate’s Yale lock business. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions; it is expected to close by the end of this year. Yale was founded in 1868 as the Yale Lock Manufacturing Co., while ASSA ABLOY dates to 1881. August Home was founded in 2013. Co-founder Jason Johnson will remain CEO of August Home.

London-based Truphone will acquire Cellnetrix Group of Munich, Germany, a provider of secure SIM operating systems. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Truphone has raised £255 million (about $335.4 million) through a rights issue to retire its debt and is expanding into the Internet of Things and eSIM technology.

Finance
Brilliant Home Technology has raised $21 million in Series A funding led by August Capital, bringing its total funding to $24 million. The Box Group, Miramar Ventures, and the Stanford-StartX Fund were among the other investors in the round. The startup, which markets the Brilliant Control for home systems, will use the money to expand retail channels, partnerships, and continued investment into research and product development. Brilliant named Kostas Reissis, a former sales executive at Sonos, as its vice president of sales. August Capital General Partner David Hornik is joining the Brilliant board of directors.

Conferences
Arm TechCon 2017 takes up residence in the Santa Clara Convention Center next week, running Tuesday through Thursday, October 24-25-26. The annual conference will feature keynote addresses by top Arm executives, Stacey Higginbotham of SKT Labs, and Jessica Barker of cyber.uk, plus panel sessions and technical presentations. Ed Sperling, editor-in-chief of Semiconductor Engineering, will moderate two panel sessions, “Ensuring Your Supply Chain of Trust: Whose Problem Is It?” and “IoT: Is a Custom Chip the Best Solution?” SE’s Brian Bailey will take part in a panel discussion on hypervisors. There will be a happy hour and networking opportunities at the end of each day.

Connectivity
The LoRa Alliance this week released new technical specifications at its 9th All Members Meeting in Suzhou, China, hosted by ZTE. The new specs are LoRaWAN 1.1, LoRaWAN Backend Interfaces 1.0, and LoRaWAN 1.1 Regional Parameters rev. A. Meanwhile, ThingPark China has opened an IoT Ecosystem Lab in Beijing and is allowing access to its online Marketplace to developers of IoT devices and solutions providers in China. Actility is an investor in ThingPark China and is the creator of the ThingPark IoT platform.

Deals
Apple and General Electric are collaborating on bringing GE’s Predix Industrial IoT platform to iPhones and iPads. The companies will offer a software development kit for IIoT applications to run on Apple’s iOS operating system. GE will standardize on iPhone and iPad for mobile devices, while Apple will tout Predix to its developers and customers.

Products
The Samsung Connect Tag was introduced this week by Samsung Electronics. The consumer device uses narrowband IoT technology to link itself with Samsung’s SmartThings Hub and the Samsung Connect mobile application. The tracker is 4.21 centimeters wide and 1.19cm thick. It has an embedded, programmable, virtual SIM that cannot be removed from the device.

OriginGPS selected the One-IoT Platform and LwM2M embedded client from Friendly Technologies for demonstrating its OriginIoT offering. OriginGPS addresses the asset tracking, automotive, drones, IoT, smart cities, and wearable gadgets markets.

Services
DevicePilot and Epitiro are working together to provide service assurance in IoT and wireless networks. Epitiro’s wireless performance management and service assurance offering is paired with DevicePilot’s hosted platform.

CENTRI Internet of Things Advanced Security – IoTAS now supports the Arm Mbed IoT Device Platform, according to CENTRI, which is a member of the Mbed partner program and will exhibit next week at Arm TechCon 2017.

Green Hills Software will showcase its technology for automotive electronics and secure IoT devices at Arm TechCon. The software company’s executives are participating in several technical presentations and panel sessions at next week’s conference.

Yodiwo is partnering with Senet on development and deployment of large-scale IoT offerings. Yodiwo will provide its 3D application enablement platform and services, while Senet will bring its low-power wide-area network infrastructure.

Recognition
The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association gave three industry awards to Cambium Networks – Manufacturer of the Year, Service of the Year for the cnMaestro management system, and Product of the Year for the PMP 450m wireless access point.