Immer Dienstags erscheint an dieser Stelle eine kommentierte Übersicht zu den wichtigsten Entwicklungen und besten Analysen aus der Welt der vernetzten Geräte, dem 'Internet der Dinge'. Vernetzte Welt kann per Email und per RSS-Feed abonniert werden.
Top-News
Samsung investiert in Sigfox
Samsung hat in bekannter Höhe in das französische IoT-Netzwerkunternehmen Sigfox investiert. Das Investment kommt zusätzlich zu einer bestehenden Kooperation und einem neuen R&D-Center in Paris. Rude Baguette:
In addition to an undisclosed sum of investment, Samsung has announced it will open up an IoT R&D Center in Paris, where Samsung’s Luc Julia already had a small team of engineers for the past 9 months.
Wie auch immer die angekündigte Integration von Sigfox in Samsungs IoT-Plattform aussehen wird, auch diese wird aufgrund der Größe von Samsung Sigfox helfen, aus dem Tal der Netzwerkeffekte herauszukommen.
Sigfox baut ein Mobilfunknetzwerk auf, dass auf Machine-to-machine-Kommunikation spezialisiert ist. Wir haben in Thingonomics 5 ausführlich über Sigfox gesprochen.
~
Quirky gibt Hardwareproduktion auf, steigt auf "Powered by Quirky" um, plant Amazon-Dash-Produktserie
Nach größeren Qualitätsproblemen bei den Produkten gibt Quirky die Hardwareproduktion wieder auf und steigt auf ein Lizenzmodell um.
Selling off that machinery would make sense, because Kaufman tells Fortune that Quirky will stop making any of its own products at all. It's looking for Powered By Quirky partners for the "electronics" category it had decided to stick with in February.
As for the "appliance" category, Quirky announced in March that it would start making smart appliances through a partnership with Amazon, but Kaufman says that a formal announcement will come about that soon, given its decision to stop manufacturing.
Kaufman also told Fortune said that Wink is now "closing in" on a round of outside funding, separate from the funding that Quirky is raising. Both rounds will have new lead investors — Quirky has previously raised $185 million from GE, Andreessen Horowitz, Keiner Perkins, Caufield, RRE Ventures, and Norwest Venture Partners.
Going forward, Quirky only will serve as a sort of invention middleman focused on design and distribution, but not on manufacturing. Instead, future Quirky products will be modeled on its existing arrangement with GE, or subsequent ones with Mattel (focused on new toys and baby products) and Harman (focused on next-gen headphones). Quirky also hopes to find a partner for its existing outlet and switches business, but that it has not yet done so. There also seems to be a plan in place to stick with the planned launch of a product line that will work with Amazon’s new Dash service (Kaufman says that a formal announcement should come soon).
(Hervorhebung von mir.) Warum ein Dash-Programm bei Quirky Wellen schlagen könnte, kann man erahnen, wenn man meine Dash-Analyse gelesen hat.
Mit besserer Umsetzung der Produkte hätte Wink gute Aussichten gehabt, eine führende Smart-Home-Plattform zu werden. Die Entscheidungsprozesse zu den Produkten sind nachwievor einzigartig und von enormem Vorteil für die aktuelle Marktphase. Das Lizenzmodell ergibt für Quirky Sinn.
Insgesamt kann man die Signale aber auch so deuten, dass eine Übernahme durch Amazon immer wahrscheinlicher wird. (Nicht zuletzt, weil Amazon selbst Hardware und Crowd-Ansätze (exklusiv) verbinden will.)
~
Telekom will Smart Home in alle Router einbauen
Da bekommt Routerzwang eine neue Bedeutung. Golem:
Die Deutsche Telekom will Smart Home in ihre Router integrieren. Das hat Michael Schuld, Head of Communication and Sales Marketing der Telekom Deutschland, am 11. Juni 2015 auf der Branchenmesse Angacom in Köln gesagt. "Wir liefern jeden Tag eine siebenstellige Zahl an Routern raus. Die Pläne dafür sind fertig, Smart Home in all unsere Router zu integrieren."
(..)
Smart Home werde auch nicht mit 12 verschiedenen Apps und unterschiedlichen Services funktionieren, betonte Schuld, sondern über eine App und ein Gateway.
Erstaunlich ungeklärt ist hierbei die Plattformfrage. Mit wem will die Telekom kooperieren? Was will sie selbst bauen? Wieso wird ihr Angebot qualitativ besser sein als die Rundumansätze von Apple und Google?
~
Weitere Entwicklungen
Französisches IoT-Startup Actility sammelt 22,5 Mio. € ein
Neben Sigfox ist Actility das zweite französiche IoT-Unternehmen, das mit einer Finanzierungsrunde für Schlagzeilen sorg. TechCrunch:
Actility, announced that it has raised €22.5 million ($25 million), led by Ginko Ventures, the European investment arm of Foxconn. Others in the round include the carriers Orange (which has disclosed a €3 million stake), Swisscom and KPN, as well as Fonds Ecotechnologies managed by Bpifrance Investissement, Idinvest Partners, and Truffle Capital.
Actilitys Produkt ist die IoT-Plattform ThingPark.
~
"Europe Has The Potential To Dominate Industrial IoT, But Can It Deliver?"
Passend zu den zwei französischen Finanzierungsrunden, fragt TechCrunch ob Europa sein IoT-Potenzial ausspielen kann.
~
Renesas Synergy Plattform
The Renesas Synergy platform is one more example of a big electronics company — in this case, a Japanese chip maker — creating its own platform that enables hardware, software, and services that deliver the Internet of Things (IoT), which makes everyday objects smarter and connected to the Internet. (..)
Hoping to sell more chips, Renesas has created its own software and applications programming interface (API) to reduce the time it takes to get IoT applications out. It also reduces costs and removes many of the obstacles that engineers face as they design new apps, the company said.
~
IBM & Apache Spark
IBM is tying its Spark initiatives to the rise of the Internet of Things, too. As data and analytics are embedded into all kinds of objects and apps as part of the Internet of Things (IoT) push, IBM claims that "Spark brings essential advances to large-scale data processing." The company says it dramatically improves the performance of data dependent apps. And, it purportedly radically simplifies the process of developing intelligent apps, which are fueled by data.
~
"The IoT will be as fundamental as the Internet itself"
O'Reilly Radar mit einem weiteren Grundsatz-Artikel zum Internet der Dinge:
If you did a Google search for “IoT” in 2012, the top results would have included “Illuminates of Thanateros” and “International Oceanic Travel Organization.” A search for “Internet of Things” would have produced a results page with a list of academic papers at the top, but with no advertisements — a strong indicator, if ever there was one, that in 2012, few people spent marketing dollars on the IoT. Two years on, and this had changed dramatically. In 2014, the IoT was one of the most hyped buzzwords in the IT industry. IT analysts everywhere tried to outdo each other’s growth projections for 2020, from Cisco’s 50 billion connected devices to Gartner’s economic value add of $1.9 trillion.
(..)
Finally, many people ask: why now? We have been waiting for hockey-stick growth curves in the M2M market for nearly a decade; why is the IoT taking off now? The answer to this question has partly to do with momentum, partly with business models, and partly with technology.
~
Crowsnest
Crowsnest bietet Crash Analytics für vernetzte Geräte an.
~
USA vs. China
TechCrunch über die (Heim-)Vorteile chinesischer Unternehmen:
To establish market dominance, companies must develop ecosystems or a unified platform of elegant user experiences to enable the convergence of the full range of smart devices.
(..)
Asian consumer electronics companies, especially recent Chinese wunderkinds such as Xiaomi have been building a tremendous production advantage based on three key elements: engineering, manufacturing and massive scale.
(..)
Over the past decade, Chinese companies have ridden the twin waves of an exploding Chinese middle class and the emerging dominance of e-commerce to become major players with the potential to threaten established global companies.
~
Evrythng erhält 7,5 Mio. $ Risikokapital
Similarly, Evrythng’s platform is the backend for the SmartPlug on iHome devices, now in over 50 million households worldwide. The platform enables the products to interact with, and control, other products.
The Products platform was launched in 2012, and the company, which began in London and Switzerland, is now based in three cities: London, New York, and San Francisco.
~
Sense sammelt neues Geld ein
Der Sense-Schlaftracker sammelt laut TechCrunch in einer neuen Finanzierungsrunde zwischen 250 und 300 Mio. $ ein. Sense-Hersteller Hello begann sein Leben als Kickstarter-Campagne und sammelte über Crowdfunding 2,4 Mio. $ ein.
~~