Machine to machine is really beginning to take off. You really do have to picture a brave new world where tiny little devices are talking all the time, reporting back to some central place, updating one another and monitoring things ‘ to fully appreciate how many chips and how much bandwidth will be needed.
A few weeks back we cited Vodafone getting a 100 person strong team together, but perhaps this week’s deal between Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm to create a 50:50 held joint venture in this technology, is even more indicative of how rapidly moving this technology is.
Just think of ANYTHING with power, and preferable something which is not already a phone and which is portable ‘ such as a car, or a credit card terminal, or a camera, or a book reader or an MP3 player and also some of the not so portable devices ‘ fridges, heaters, air conditioners, electricity and gas meters, cookers, TV sets and especially those which are not currently easy to connect to a home wi-fi router, and you have your candidate devices. Add to that the many instances in large corporations of electronic assets, and now picture what any of them could tell you or some other central agency that is of interest, and the M2M world begins to open up.
Qualcomm has said in the past that it envisages a world where each individual has at least 4 cellular connections in a modern western civilization. We are talking billions of connections.
The new Qualcomm Verizon venture, unnamed as yet, will initially target M2M applications in a few key verticals, particularly healthcare, utilities/smart grid, and consumer electronics offerings that integrate a service with a device (like Amazon Kindle on Sprint’s network).
Which is good, because when Kindle went to Sprint it would have been asking a question about connectivity, and suggesting a new business model, which no operator was equipped to hear (although somehow a deal was cut and the message got through).
Announcing the deal at Qualcomm’s Smart Services conference in its San Diego home, Verizon Wireless’ open development chief Tony Lewis called it “the ultimate partnership for M2M”. He acknowledged the challenges too, and said Verizon and its partner would pool their expertise to address these, particularly security and privacy issues in healthcare and reliability for the electricity grid.
Developing hardware and software platforms, and hosting services, for M2M have been key aspects of Qualcomm strategy for some years, though it recently closed down its LifeComm healthcare initiative on funding shortfalls. It sees the market as an important way to diversify its business models and reduce its dependence on its core CDMA silicon products, and managing carrier services not only infiltrates its technologies into new sectors, but tightens its alliances with large cellcos, with which it has always worked more closely than the average chip firm.
Elsewhere in the US AT&T separately has already taken several M2M steps including tie-ups with smart meter companies, while T-Mobile USA has been pushing a SIM-based technology for remote management of utility equipment over 3G.
No financial details were revealed, except the venture would be autonomous and equally owned, and headed up by Steve Pazol, currently VP of Global Smart Services at Qualcomm.