Business & Markets

The Board of Governors of the IoT M2M Council (IMC) – with 20,000 members, the largest and fastest-growing trade group serving the IoT sector – has named Joel Young, CTO of Digi International, as its new chairman.

All these Mirai BotNet stories can’t be helping the IoT industry can they? Still, on the basis that all publicity is good publicity, perhaps some good will come out of the recent network hijackings.

Many of us love the idea of smart home devices – simplifying tasks like turning on lights or locking doors – but even early adopters will admit, they can be a pain to configure. There are too many steps, too much guesswork and too many potential security holes.

Barely one in ten homes in Europe have a smart home system in place. One reason for these rather low figures is that manufacturers of smart home solutions used to focus on exclusive and often expensive systems that are incompatible with each other.

The ULE Alliance will show its first multi-vendor ULE Smart Home demonstration at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. All the latest Ultra Low Energy innovations will be showcased in one place.

BlackBerry Ltd announced its most advanced and secure embedded operating system (OS) for the automotive industry. QNX® Software Development Platform 7.0 (QNX® SDP 7.0) is a 64-bit OS that builds on the proven reliability of QNX technology and raises the bar for security and performance in cars.

The zigbee alliance announced that from CES 2017 this week it will be showcasing a path to a unified Internet of Things (IoT). The alliance will focus on the growing momentum behind zigbee (3.0) products and development solutions, and the alliance’s newly announced dotdot — a universal language for the IoT,

Dermot O’Shea, joint CEO of antenna specialists Taoglas, is optimistic about several key aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the year ahead.

Thingsquare has announce the availability of an IoT Sensortag starter kit, in collaboration with Texas Instruments and Weptech. This, says Jarle Boe, development kit manager at Texas Instruments and founder of the Sensortag platform, is the world’s first Internet of Things (IoT) system that combines remote connectivity through IPv6 meshing with proximity detection via Bluetooth beacons.

In-car Cleverness (IcC) is collaborating with Aeris to deliver “even more consistent” IoT automotive cellular data and charge-free roaming across Europe – and the rest of the world – to its customers. These include automotive dealers, car rental operators and auto leasing and insurance companies.

Connected car services are driving recurring revenue growth and transforming the automobile industry. Revenues from connected car services are expected to top US$42 billion by 2022.

It maybe the dying embers of 2016, but in the IoT world the issue of security is burning brightly as the industry gears up for an era of intense collaboration to address the challenges ahead.

Only 19% of households are likely to purchase or use connected home technology over the next five years, according to an EY survey of 2,500 households in the UK. However, further analysis by EY shows that despite this discrepancy, there are a number of opportunities ripe for organisations looking to capitalise on the smart home

2016 has been a busy year for telecoms operators in the Internet of Things (IoT) market, most notably in low-power, wide-area (LPWA) technologies as narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-M (long-term evolution to 4G, machine to machine) approach full commercial deployment.

Samsung Electronics announced it will introduce three new Smart TV services at CES 2017, to be held January 5 through January 9, 2017 in Las Vegas. The new services – including ‘Sports’, ‘Music’ and ‘TV Plus’ – will offer personalised content to consumers based on their TV preferences through Samsung’s Smart Hub platform.

Starhome Mach, a global provider of mobile inter-carrier roaming and M2M/IoT services, recently analysed the implications of the new European Union (EU) regulations eliminating operators’ ability to charge for roaming within EU borders.