The Week in Review: IoT

Commentary
Chris Voce of Forrester Research writes that the Internet of Things next year will move beyond experimentation in this piece. “At Forrester we believe IoT extends beyond devices and connectivity,” he writes. “But it’s the business impact of IoT that truly defines what it is: the insights that you can derive with analytics and the business outcomes you can achieve.”

M&A
Marvell Technology Group will acquire Cavium for about $6 billion in cash and stock, confirming earlier market rumors. The two chip companies expect to close the transaction by mid-2018, subject to regulatory review and votes by the Cavium and Marvell shareholders. Canaccord Genuity analyst Matthew Ramsay said, “Given the current fundamental state of Cavium’s business – strong growth of core products and strong gross margins but offset by what we believe are several forward product growth and scale challenges – we believe this deal represents good value for Cavium shareholders. However, given Cavium shares had approached $75 as early as March 2015 and investor expectations of strong growth for emerging server and switching franchises, we believe many shareholders will leave underwhelmed. That said, we believe the combination of Marvell and Cavium can likely drive scale and penetration into key end markets by selling a suite of complementary products across the networking, storage and security verticals faster than either company could have done alone.”

Qualcomm once again extended its tender offer for shares of NXP Semiconductors, to December 15, 2017. Qualcomm is resisting an unsolicited takeover offer from Broadcom, which just completed acquiring Brocade Communications Systems.

The board of Rockwell Automation unanimously rejected the revised $29 billion bid for the company by Emerson Electric. Rockwell Automation said in a statement, “Emerson’s proposal undervalues Rockwell Automation and its prospects for continued growth and value creation, presents significant long-term risk for Rockwell Automation’s shareowners, and would create a company that is not well-positioned to compete successfully in the evolving market.”

R&D
Deutsche Telekom and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics opened their first IoT development center in Dortmund, Germany. The Telekom Open IoT Lab will see Fraunhofer IML scientists offer IoT hardware and applications expertise, and DT will share its IoT and cloud products.

H&D Wireless has received a $57,000 grant from Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, under the EU’s Horisont 2020 research and innovation program. The Swedish company will demonstrate its GEPS for Industry IoT enterprise indoor real-time localization service of Returnable Transport Packages, meant for the manufacturing industry.

Finance
Moeco, which is developing a blockchain-based IoT support network, has received $5 million in private funding led by Bitfury Group. The Berlin-based startup is also planning to raise money through an initial coin offering.

Market Research
The North American positive displacement pumps market is being disrupted by Industrial IoT technology with such tools as cognitive analytics and next-generation prognostics, leading to the development and implementation of smart pumps, according to Frost & Sullivan. The market research firm forecasts the PD pump market will be worth more than $2.4 billion by the end of 2023. An executive summary of the F&S study is available here.

Certification
Altair Semiconductor said its ALT1210 LTE-M chipset has completed AT&T’s ADAPT chipset validation process. The ALT1210 is an LTE-M IoT chipset that runs on extremely low power and can be upgraded by software to a single-antenna LTE CAT-1.

Services
Digi International reports that Amazon Web Services named the company an Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network. Digi was also recognized for achieving AWS IoT Competency status. Digi ConnectCore 6 is verified for AWS Greengrass and AWS IoT implementations.

Farewell
Emberlight, a startup that raised $300,000 from a Kickstarter campaign in 2014 to develop its smart light socket, is shutting down, citing competition in that market. The cloud services supporting those light sockets will continue for a few months and then shut down, basically bricking the products. Emberlight had also received some seed funding.