Telit has announced that it has agreed to acquire Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Near Field Communication (NFC) assets in hardware and software from Stollmann Entwicklungs und Vertriebs Gmbh (“Stollmann”) in Hamburg, Germany. Stollmann is a global player in the Bluetooth and NFC business, designing, developing and manufacturing cutting-edge, low-power Bluetooth modules and highly sophisticated software solutions for short range wireless communications. Assets in acquisition include among others, Stollmann’s Bluetooth and NFC software stacks, ready-to-use modules and other intellectual property (IP) in wireless communications. Thirty-five Stollmann employees, mainly R&D engineers, are to be transferred to Telit.
The acquisition of the Stollmann assets represents another strategic step for Telit in its expanding vision of connecting an ever broader range of things to cloud. Industry analyst firm MarketsandMarkets estimates the global Bluetooth Smart and “Smart-Ready” market to be worth $5.6bn by 2020 with Bluetooth Smart shipments to surpass 1.2 billion units in five years, up from just 49 million units in 2013.
The integration of Bluetooth, BLE and NFC technologies into the Telit portfolio brings considerable consumer value as businesses are able to accelerate innovation based on Bluetooth and NFC, leveraging the full spectrum of enabling, synergizing elements from Telit, including cellular and GNSS modules, mobile network connectivity and IoT platform services. These ready-to-run hardware and service combinations will enable the enterprise to move quickly from idea to business with minimal effort or investment, bringing to market a much wider range of consumer solutions than would be possible otherwise.
IoT devices are increasingly being integrated into every aspect of the consumer’s life, in application areas from health & wellness to retail and smart homes. The acquisition of these assets is a key development in the execution of our IoT vision of connecting enterprise edge assets - sensors and other remote devices – to the cloud using their tools such as the Telit IoT portal. The IP they are acquiring will provide Telit with valuable expertise in additional short-range technologies including BLE, which is set to become the de-facto standard for local area and personal area IoT wireless connectivity. As one of the IoT’s fastest growing wireless technology areas, this IP will enable them to expand their market reach with a more comprehensive end-to-end connectivity solution.
