M2M Making Farmville A Reality

Guest post by LeadingQuest.
When it comes to online games, Facebook definitely has a number to choose from, and Farmville is arguably one of the most popular games that belong to its Hall of Fame, if there ever was one. People love Farmville because it’s fun, interactive, and it’s addictive. And for most, it provides the satisfaction of growing crops, farm animals and making sure they are well taken care of, even just virtually. However, in real life farming isn’t as easy as pushing a few buttons and clicking the mouse a few times. Farming requires a lot of hard work and surely, farmers and farmland owners alike wish there was a way of doing things more convenient. With the consistent emergence of smart technology products, connecting devices into the Internet of Things through M2M communication, servicing various sectors in the society and various industries, it is quite possible that Farmville could become a reality soon.
Orange Business Services, a global Integrator of communication solutions, revealed that they will deliver a scalable infrastructure for communication and M2M devices to Dacom, a firm based in the Netherlands that develops information and communication technologies as well as sensor solutions for farms around the world. This will enable them to connect to Dacom’s thousands of connected devices from agricultural customers globally, including weather stations and soil moisture sensors. The data collected will be combined with internet and scientific knowledge and fed into smart modules for analysis and reporting. This will allow farmers and growers to optimize and anticipate the use of supplies and raw materials, as well as give him an upper hand in fine tuning specific production processes during the growing season. With this system, information is easily available and can be shared to immediate partners.
According to Janneke Hadders, Managing Director, Dacom, M2M is key to Dacom’s go-to-market strategy as the customers are requiring global support and connectivity, and their partnership has the potential to support them with managed services for Dacom’s platform, not only today, but also in the future.
The agricultural industry can also benefit from other smart technologies such as an automated monitoring system for animals and herds lactation cycles. This was an M2M collaboration between the Device Cloud Network and Anemon. Based on their report, roughly 50% of insemination times are due to inaccuracy in monitoring these animals. This telemetry based solution is expected to increase the detection rate to 90% on efficiency.
Another smart technology product introduced is called Pocket Farms. It is a suite of applications available both with iOs and Android platforms, that farmers can use for data entry, data manipulation and data retrieval. These apps enable farmers to input data offline using their phones while doing other farm work, and allows them to retrieve the information later on for processing and analysis. This is helpful in keeping tab of each cow individual history, which will be quite handy during mating seasons.
Dave Williams, CEO of Device Cloud Network, said that M2M connectivity is increasing rapidly throughout the world, across a variety of industries including agriculture and farming. The collaboration demonstrates how the Internet of Things is becoming a reality and how M2M applications can dramatically transform existing industries in exciting new ways.
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Flaircomm selects Gemalto to provide secure M2M solution for car manufacturers in China

Gemalto, the world leader in digital security announces that Flaircomm Microelectronics Inc., a high-tech company developing devices for the automotive industry, is integrating Gemalto’s M2M solution in their telematics control unit (T-Box).
The solution designed for car manufacturers in China includes the Cinterion® MIM and integrates smoothly with in-car cellular networks.
The T-box is ruggedized for extreme conditions including high temperatures, pressures and vibrations. It can inform the driver of the car conditions such as oil pressure, car speed, and engine status, as well as providing information on nearest amenities like petrol stations and convenience stores. If the car breaks down or is involved in an accident, an emergency call (eCall) will also be triggered automatically for assistance and medical help.
“According to Strategy Analysts, the connected car market in China could exceed RMB 200 billion (€23.5 billion) by 2020,” said Luke Shi, Chairman of Flaircomm Microelectronics Inc.
“Working with Gemalto puts us in a good position to address that mega-trend. We have also passed the joint debugging test carried out by ten European operators, and so we have become a key player in the automotive industry for both domestic and international markets.”
“Gemalto already has a significant M2M footprint in China, offering M2M solutions to leading providers,” added Michael Wallon, Vice President of M2M Sales for Asia Pacific at Gemalto.
“We are fully committed to meeting Flaircomm’s current and future needs, with a complete M2M offering that can include Cinterion® modules and secure personalization after the MIM has been deployed.”
“For our customers, this means simplified cross-border movement of M2M devices and unparalleled flexibility in instantly bringing on board international network partners.”
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China Leads Global Connected Living Market With Over 50 Million M2M Connections, Finds New GSMA Report

China Accounts for 27 Per Cent of Total Global M2M Connections; Close Co-operation Between Mobile Operators and Government Driving China’s M2M Leadership.
China is the global leader in the adoption of M2M technology with over 50 million connections or more than one quarter of the total M2M market in 2013, according to “How China is Set for Global M2M Leadership”, a new report issued today by the GSMA. Close collaboration between the country’s leading mobile operators China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, state-owned enterprises and the government has enabled the market to grow dramatically in a relatively short period of time, laying the foundations for further expansion and the development of the Internet of Things (IoT).
“China is a rapidly developing country that is investing in communications technologies that will make its cities smarter and provide a better quality of life for its citizens,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA.
“Proactive government support has benefited China and its mobile operators, whereas in many global markets, regulatory uncertainty has held back the deployment of M2M solutions. The addressable market and the opportunity for further growth is immense, especially when one considers the sheer number of ‘things’ such as cars or domestic appliances that could potentially be connected by mobile.”
Asia is the largest regional M2M market, accounting for 40 per cent of the world’s 189 million M2M connections at the end of 2013. Asia added 55 million M2M net connections between 2010 and 2013 and China was the primary driver of growth in the region, adding nearly 39 million M2M connections during the period. Demand from the energy and transportation industries has driven much of this early growth, while M2M solutions are also gaining traction in the automotive, smart city, healthcare, education and retail sectors.
The report also reveals that China’s leading mobile operators have developed sophisticated M2M service propositions that go beyond the provision of basic connectivity. These typically combine a generic horizontal platform, designed to work across all industry sectors with dedicated vertical platforms for specific application areas, such as automotive or healthcare. All three Chinese operators stress the importance of working with partners to create technological and commercial platforms that can nurture a vibrant and innovative M2M ecosystem.
Please click here to download the “How China is Set for Global M2M Leadership” report.
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Lyse Chooses Telenor Connexion For Smart Electricity Meters

Lyse Elnett is the first larger network provider to widely install smart electricity meters in Norwegian homes.
This rollout marks the starting point which will allow more services available for smart homes. Lyse has selected Telenor Connexion to be the mobile communications provider for the solution, which will be installed in 140,000 households.
According to a decision by the AMS (Advanced Metering System) of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, all customers in Norway will have access to a smart electricity meter by latest 1 January, 2019. The electricity companies will be responsible for the implementation, and the first wide-scale rollout will be initiated at the end of the year when Lyse install smart electricity meters in their customers’ homes in the Sør-Rogaland area of Norway. This rollout is estimated to include 140,000 households by the end of 2018.
Lyse Smart is on behalf of Lyse Elnett responsible for the communication to and from the meters. The company will also offer commercial services that are optional for the customer.
Jan Holm, Managing Director of Lyse Smart, a subsidiary of Lyse, which develops and sells these kinds of solutions under the brand name Smartly, says:
“Smart electricity meters are a milestone which will benefit customers as well as society. The communications unit at the meter can also be a hub for smart home services, and this roll-out eliminates parts of the high cost threshold that has characterised the smart home-market. This will enable customers to easily control lights, heating, alarms, doors and shading from smartphones or tablet devices.”
The smart electricity meter registers the electricity consumption on an hourly basis and automatically sends this information to Lyse Elnett through a communications unit, which is coupled to the meter. This means that the customer can receive detailed information regarding their electricity usage and thereby know the exact account payment due. Combined with heat management, the customer can save money by only using the heating system when it is actually necessary, and when prices on the electricity market are low. In addition to this, Lyse Elnett will further enhance the delivery quality further through comprehensive usage of meter data.
Access to the system is important
“Establishing quality in our communications solutions is critical to us. We have chosen a system enabling redundant communications solutions and where Telenor Connexion is supplying a central component communications via the mobile network. We will provide welfare technology so that the elderly can live in the comfort of their homes for longer, and the most important functions of the home become digitalised. Availability and stability are critical, which is why we have chosen Telenor Connexion, as they have experience from this area”, says Holm.
The solution from Telenor Connexion includes hardware and services. Telenor Connexion will also provide a VPN-solution and access to real-time data for secure communication between Lyse Elnett and the meter. Additionally, support services which will be available 24 hours per day for immediate troubleshooting, as well as access to the country’s leading network through Telenor Norway.
“We are proud that Lyse has chosen us to be the supplier in the first large rollout of AMS, and that we will be part of reducing energy consumption”, says Per Simonsen, CEO of Telenor Connexion.
“We have extensive experience within the field, as we were involved in the connection and operation of almost 1 million electric meters as part of regulating the electricity market in Sweden in 2009. Our communication solutions are also available in several other critical services such as house alarms, OnCall (car alarms) and other monitoring services.”
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Maestro Wireless Solutions Limited Acquires the Assets of Falcom Wireless Communications GmbH

Maestro Wireless Solutions Limited (“Maestro”), a global provider of machine-to-machine (“M2M”) and Internet of Things (“IoT”) solutions, today finalised the acquisition of the assets of Falcom Wireless Communications GmbH, a renowned provider of tracking solutions.
The said assets are being injected into the newly established FALCOM GmbH (“FALCOM”), of which Maestro detains a majority stake whereas its management, consisting of Messrs Holger Liebold, Stephan Orlamünder, Guido Voigt and Rudy Alix, holds the balance.
Said Holger Liebold, managing director of FALCOM:
“We are very pleased to emerge with all our forces intact from a challenging chapter of our 23-year history: indeed, the insolvency of our previous parent company has caused our clients, suppliers and obviously ourselves some complications and we are very keen now on restoring FALCOM to its former glory with the full support of Maestro, be it financial, marketing or geographical, Maestro being already present in six other countries over three continents.”
Xavier Dupont, chief executive officer of Fargo Telecom Holdings Limited, of which Maestro is a fully-owned subsidiary, added:
“We are extremely pleased to add FALCOM to our growing stable of IoT companies; beyond its sizeable business, its comprehensive portfolio of beautifully crafted products and services, its substantial footprint in the heart of Europe and, last but not least, its seasoned management, FALCOM also brings us a world-class R&D team with unparalleled experience in telematics and an historic, powerful, brand; the synergies between the parties are truly striking and we look forward to a bright future together.”
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Revelations at the Apple WDC 2014: Apple has jumped into the M2M/IoT space

Guest post by LeadingQuest.
The rumor-mill has indeed been on hyperactivity in the last couple of months in anticipation of what Apple is cooking up as competitor companies such as Samsung launched products in wearable tech and its latest flagship which is the Samsung Galaxy S5. Finally, Apple kicked off Worldwide Developers Conference by confirming some of the speculations that has been going around starting with its announcement ahead of the conference, to acquire the headphone and music streaming company Beats Electronics for $3 billion. During the conference Apple also revealed its new mobile operating system, iOS 8 which will make it easier for you to share and search. This new operating system, which will be made available for download in the fall of this year, also includes Healthkit, a hub for storing and sorting health information such as vital signs, keep track of your diet and sleeping habits. Healthkit can be used with other third party applications such as those from Nike and Mayo Clinic to help you and healthcare providers alike to keep tab of your health much easier. It also allows you to choose which application will have access to your health information to protect your privacy.
Apple also announced its much-anticipated smart home technology offer called HomeKit, quite an expected move for Apple into the Internet of Things. HomeKit allows you to take control of selected gadgets and appliances at home such as lighting, door locks and thermostats. According to Craig Federighi, Senior VP Software Engineering, Apple worked with leaders in home automation devices and has come up with a kit that has a common network protocol and secure pairing to ensure that only your iPhone can access your door locks. In addition to being able to unlock doors, with HomeKit you can control individual devices in your home and group these devices, change them into scenes, and with Siri integration you can command these devices to do specific tasks following certain control settings using your iPhone.
Another highlight of the conference is the new Mac operating system Yosemite, and iOS software getting new designs and better ways of exchanging files. Mac and iOS are two identifiably separate systems however, Apple CEO Time Cook says that these systems have been engineered to work seamlessly. Mac and iPhone can now use AirDrop to exchange files directly. A new handoff feature is also introduced, which allows effortless switching of devices. This feature also allows Mac to receive caller identification on an incoming phone call on your iPhone and allows you to use your Mac as speaker.
One major difference in this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference is the lack of new product announcement. Typically Apple announces new iPhones around September and iPad products after that. Speculations still abound as to what comes next of the very popular smartphone. Rumors had it that the next iPhone will have 4.7 and 5.5 inch screens as reported by the South China Morning Post, but these remained mere speculations as of this point.
Nonetheless, analysts and developers remain optimistic that these software advances made by Apple will catapult the industry for more life-changing innovations.
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Summit Partners and FleetCor Technologies Acquire Masternaut, a European Leader in Telematics

Growth equity investor Summit Partners today announced a joint venture with FleetCor Technologies, Inc. to acquire Masternaut Group Holdings Limited, Europe’s largest provider of telematics solutions to commercial fleets, from Francisco Partners.
Masternaut’s management team, led by its experienced CEO Martin Hiscox, will continue to operate the business and remain shareholders in the company.
Founded in 1996 and with headquarters in the U.K., Masternaut provides a SaaS-based Mobile Resource Management (MRM) application suite for businesses of all sizes to help them achieve greater operational efficiencies through a lowering of vehicle fuel consumption, effective tracking of assets, productivity increases in workforce, reduced vehicle wear and tear, improved management of driver behavior, and a reduction in CO2 emissions. The company has over 300,000 assets, vehicles and people connected to its SaaS solutions. More than 15,000 users interact every hour with the systems, and over 50 million data transactions are processed and configured into 20,000 reports daily. With customers in 32 countries, Masternaut has multiple offices and partners throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia.
“We are excited to partner with both Summit Partners and FleetCor,” said Martin Hiscox, CEO of Masternaut.
“Summit Partners brings a wealth of experience in helping fast growing companies reach their goals. FleetCor is a leading global provider of fuel cards and workforce payments products to the same commercial fleet customers that Masternaut serves. We look forward to exploring significant cross marketing opportunities that exist between our companies to accelerate the growth of Masternaut. We also would like to thank Francisco Partners for their tremendous support of our company over the last four years.”
“We are very pleased to complete the acquisition of Masternaut,” said Han Sikkens, a Managing Director with Summit Partners.
“The company is the pan-European market leader in telematics-based solutions led by a very strong and experienced management team. With the largest R&D team in Europe, Masternaut continuously innovates to deliver the most reliable and scalable platform available on the market today.”
John Carroll, a Managing Director with Summit added:
“We are also excited to partner with FleetCor, a company we originally backed in 2002 that has become an undisputed global leader in its industry and that can bring a lot of valuable assets and know-how to support the continued growth of Masternaut.”
Ron Clarke, Chairman and CEO of FleetCor said:
“We are delighted to team up with Summit Partners in acquiring Masternaut. In a short period of time, Masternaut has developed the best-in-class telematics product and a pan-European footprint. We at FleetCor have valuable fleet customer and partner relationships in Europe. Combination of the two would allow us to deliver more value to our clients, differentiate our product offerings, and ultimately grow our businesses.”
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Telit Debuts Telit ATOP 3.5G at Telematics Detroit

New Flagship Automotive Product Integrates Expansive Processing Power with HSPA+, GPS/GLONASS and NFC for a Variety of OEM Connected Car Applications.
Telit Wireless Solutions, a leading global vendor of high-quality machine-to-machine (M2M) modules, value-added services and solutions, today introduced the new Telit ATOP 3.5G, its new flagship product resulting from the recent acquisition of the Automotive Telematics On-board unit Platform (ATOP) business from Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors (Nasdaq NXPI).
The ATOP 3.5G simplifies the development of automotive applications such as road pricing and eCall thanks to its unique integration of all required technologies, including: 3G cellular connectivity for voice and data communication; GPS/GLONASS for location, and near-field communications for driver authentication or to facilitate mobile payments directly from the car.
In addition, the ATOP 3.5G offers unparalleled processing power, thanks to three onboard processors. An application processor runs Java J9 Virtual Machine for simple code creation and portability. A dedicated interface processor manages vehicle interface using a choice of technologies including CAN, USB, Ethernet, UART and ADC. Plus, the optional SmartMX smartcard CPU with Java card JCOP OS provides embedded, hardware-based security for rock-solid fraud prevention and data integrity, suitable for end-to-end transaction systems requiring Common Criteria level 5+.
Fully backward-compatible with the 2.5G product already on the market from NXP, the Telit ATOP 3.5G is available in three variants for global network coverage.
Dominik Hierl, CEO of Telit Automotive Solutions said:
“The ATOP 3.5G supports an industry leading range of features from a single package. It is a perfect complement to the rest of our ONE STOP. ONE SHOP. products and services offering, designed to make the integration of connected functionality easier than ever for Automotive OEMs to adopt and commercialize.”
The first new product from the recently formed Telit Automotive Solutions business unit, the ATOP 3.5G joins a family of products designed specifically to meet the needs of the Automotive OEM marketplace. Telit automotive products are subject to automotive-grade lifecycle and process management. They offer easy scalability thanks to family form factors; global operations, and global regulatory and carrier certification. Moreover, they represent industry-leading innovation with a roadmap to the latest, cutting-edge technologies plus intelligent integration of new hardware, software and services functionalities.
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Wearable Technology $50 Billion Investment Frenzy

By Dr Peter Harrop, IDTechEx.
Many giant electronics manufacturers, computer services companies and conglomerates have tens of billions of dollars in the bank that is instantly available for investment to counter their saturating sales in mature markets. Samsung, General Electric and Google are examples and Apple even has $133 billion available. They all seek, “the next big thing”, preferably one or more emerging, potentially-huge markets that can leverage the skills they have honed in such things as mobile phones and their services. Wearable technology has attracted their close attention as many of them have or are developing such technology and associated services and Google Trends has a graph headed heavenwards in the last few months to show that they are certainly not alone.
In March 2014, Facebook announced it will buy Oculus VR, a Californian company which specialises in virtual reality headsets, for around $2 billion. Now Apple is negotiating to buy the company Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion, its biggest ever expenditure on a takeover. Beats is not huge: it has 27% of the $1.8 billion US headphones business mainly because of its premium pricing. Indeed, it has 57% of the premium sector of that market and it also has a music streaming service, both of which can leverage existing Apple offerings in wearable electronics.
Facebook and Apple do not talk of paybacks, calling the investments strategic, probably meaning that they are proceeding regardless. Many of these huge “gut feel” investments also tick a box under newly hot topics overlapping wearable technology namely “Internet of People (IoP)” or “Internet of Things (IoT)”. These devices are directly internet-identified now that IPv6 allows an effectively infinite number of IP addresses to be issued. IDTechEx predicts that as many as 55 billion IoP devices in use in 2025, many employing printed, flexible electronics and completely new components.
Recently, Google has paid a strategic $3.2 billion for the small IoT/IoP company Nest Labs that has made a few million connected smart thermostats and smoke and carbon dioxide detectors. Nest hopes to earn more from selling measurement analytics than from the devices themselves. These devices detect and respond to personal needs just like much wearable technology where Google must have already committed at least $1 billion to the internal development of the exciting Google Glass, an experimental diagnostic contact lens for diabetics and a planned smart watch, all actually or potentially connected wearable technology – IoP.
One use of Google Glass is in industry. In February 2014, GE announced it would invest $1.5 billion into “industrial internet” research from 2012 to 2015. Now watch giant Cisco with over $46 billion in the bank and intense interest in IoP and IoT and early participation in these markets as a system integrator. Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are circling. The investment frenzy continues.
IDTechEx has covered these developments in its reports “Wearable Technology 2014-2024: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts“, “E-Textiles: Electronic Textiles 2014-2024“, “Internet of Things (IoT): Business Opportunities 2015-2025” and “Internet of People: Technology 2015-2025“, see www.IDTechEx.com/Research.
FactSet has named the top 10 cash-rich companies, and half of them are in the tech industry: Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Apple and Oracle. Combined, these five tech companies held $245 billion in cash and all are intensely interested in wearable technology, IoT and IoP. Sprinkling a few billion here and there to participate does not “bet the shop” for any of these companies.
It is a good time to be a small business launching inspired wearable and other electronics for humans.
You may get bought for an eye watering sum of money. Alternatively, IDTechEx counsels that you do not meet the giants head on but take a look at the smaller but still substantial sector of wearable electronics for animals with an initially addressable market of 20 billion animals managed by humans. Later, that business will add substantial wearable electronic ID, diagnostics, location and treatment for billions of endangered species as we destroy the world around us. The big boys are giving that a miss for now.
See the new IDTechEx report, “Wearable Technology for Animals 2015-2025“, coming soon to www.IDTechEx.com/research.
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Demand grows for multi-technology SON as mobile operators look to deploy M2M infrastructure

Cellwize sees growing demand for multi-technology SON as mobile operators look to deploy M2M infrastructure.
Cellwize, the innovative Self-Optimizing Network (SON) solutions provider announced today that an increasing number of mobile operators are looking to deploy cross-technology and multi-vendor Self-Optimizing Network (SON) solutions to boost 2G, 3G and LTE networks. One reason for this is that with the drive towards creating the infrastructure for M2M, optimizing the sometimes-forgotten 2G network is back on top of operators’ agendas.
Ofir Zemer, CEO of Cellwize, said:
“At the moment, there’s a definite focus on 3G and 4G technologies, yet 2G’s role is sometimes overlooked. Fact is, it is still the trusted workhorse for so many operators and 2G does provide ubiquitous coverage. That’s why most IoT and M2M devices currently use 2G – it is the most efficient form of a connection.”
“The good news is that operators are looking to the future too. We’ve observed increasing interest for holistic SON solutions that support 2G, 3G and LTE. A SON solution needs to meet the demands of today’s network and be future proof to meet tomorrow’s needs.”
Cellwize’s observations are in line with a recent report from Machina Research. M2M is currently dominated by 2G and Machina Research predicts that by 2022, 3G and LTE will account for almost 90% of connections. Currently, since the transition from 2G to 3G for IoT is slow, operators need to ensure their IoT Service Level Agreements (SLA) are guaranteed through the implementation of a SON solution that supports the optimisation of multiple technologies.
Cellwize’s centralized SON (C-SON) solutions have proven popular amongst operators as it can deliver outstanding coverage for 2G and works seamlessly to deliver 3G and LTE. elastic-SON(tm) is able to make the most out of the entire network by providing mobility, robustness and retainability. It can deliver 25 percent more capacity, 30 percent increase in data throughput and 10 percent more coverage.
Cellwize was founded by Radio Frequency (RF) engineers who mastered network topology and network behaviour. The innovative market proven elastic-SON(tm) establishes the building blocks to support customer-centric use cases with its Value Driven-SON(tm), which uses Big Data insight to self-adapt the network to meet customer needs in real time. Cellwize SON solutions are very fast; able to access, analyse and moderate 40,000 sectors in 47 sec from data collection to SON recommendation using 1 non-unique server.

About Cellwize
Cellwize provides cutting-edge SON (Self Organizing Network) solutions to mobile operators. Mobile networks empowered by its proprietary elastic-SON ™ continuously react to real-time changes and match capacity, coverage and quality with evolving usage patterns and users’ needs.
Cellwize was founded by telecom professionals and its technology was designed by RF experts mastering network topology and behaviors. Cellwize is headquartered in Singapore with R&D and sales offices across the EMEA region.
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