Where Am I? Meet Who Am I? : Trimble Acquires ThingMagic

With relatively little activity in the RFID space these days, it’s interesting to see the latest move by GPS leader Trimble Navigation to acquire ThingMagic. As one of the early movers to recognize the value in RFID for automated identification, ThingMagic has it’s fingerprints in standards and vision of most RFID players. They recognized early on that the future “Internet of Things” can be best realized when the these things can communicate with dynamic, software-based, protocols. I love their vision of “adding magic to everyday objects”.

Trimble clearly recognizes the value of this medium and combination of location aware services with near field communication technologies. Leverage can come from new innovations but also with growth to new markets under a lower overhead model, economies of scale, and the capital that Trimble brings to be a market leader.

Is this a beginning of a bigger trend of acquisitions for RFID or the M2M market? Will Trimble make moves towards other communication players – or perhaps to the sensor market? Now that we know where you are, and who you are – perhaps the next move is “how good you are“.

Who knows – but it is good to see strategic moves that give us pause for consideration.

Press Release – Click Here.

Breakout Year for M2M M&A?

M2M Magazine has provided a tracking report on mergers and acquisitions in the Machine to Machine space with data going back to 2001.  As of today it appears the report has not been updated since December 2009, a review of the data begs a question.   Is the M&A activity for this space on the decline or is there pent-up demand ready for a breakout year?  Considering the trajectory we were on in 2008 and the likely economic drag from 2009, I think we’ll see a lot more activity in the coming months and years.  What do you think?

Chart Summary by F.W.Hesse

Data Source: M2M Magazine List of Acquisitions

Opportunities in Machine-to-Machine and Location Based Services

On Tuesday I attended a breakfast session called “M2M & LBS Ecosystem – Wireless Devices, Connectivity, & Smart Services” as part of the Wireless SIG at CommNexus. With great anticipation I wanted to hear about the latest views on opportunities, solutions, breadth, and market for M2M and LBS technologies. What is that? Generally along the following lines:

Machine to Machine (M2M) refers to data communications between machines or sometimes people and machines. For the mobile phone world it means Mobile-to-Mobile. While often referring to telematics (making use of established public wireless networks), in a pure sense it simply is two devices connected over some wireless protocol.

A location-based service (LBS) provides a software application, most often on a mobile device, with information about where the device is located. These services can provide valuable benefits to end users and systems.

The presenters did a nice job to share their experiences in building connected service solutions and companies. It is great to see how established companies and new companies are partnering to create innovative new solutions and markets.

Yet much of the content from Tuesday’s session centered around the predicament faced by business ventures in this space as they partner with carriers like Sprint and Verizon. The partners are necessary participants, yet can be overbearing partners.  Missing was much discussion about the Smart Grid, LBS and other wireless protocols.

And as I listened to the presenters and following Q&A, it became obvious that F-U-D remains. I sensed an unusual quiet and reserved tone from an audience (125 in attendance) that would normally have loads of questions. Some of my reflections – listed below.

Areas of agreement:

• Operators / Carriers of public networks enjoy huge leverage and control over deployment for any devices expected to transmit data in that manner. Partnerships with these carriers will be the deal makers and breakers.
• The coming market for the “Internet of Things” is huge. 6 billion people, 50 billion devices at least.
• Centralized “360 degree” management has the potential to dwarf today’s mobile device concerns. IT administrators simply concerned with laptop management will be in for a giant surprise.
• The customer support model for these devices will create enormous business challenges and opportunities.
• Standards are not complete.

Areas of debate:

• “Right Problem, Wrong Hammer”. Why pay margin to a mobile carrier for bits of data communicated on a private network. For example: Bluetooth, ZigBee, and RFID can potentially capture vast data feeds that never need to jump over public networks.
• Scalability of deployment .
• What is the most effective supply chain.
• Clear business opportunities with actual ROI.

Nevertheless, I left the meeting with renewed optimism about the near-term and long-term business potential in the broad M2M ecosystem. At a minimum, it appears that strategic consulting opportunities exist to help companies choose platforms, technologies, and partners. At a maximum, we have enormous opportunities to improve the outcomes for our wellbeing, enjoyment, and satisfaction in life.   Let’s do something great with it!