General Electric’s (GE) acquisition of Attenti, an Israeli company that makes people trackers currently used for criminal offenders and Alzheimer’s patients signals a big change in the industry: bigger players with fatter wallets are entering the segment to capture M2M’s unique value proposition.
While GE isn’t new to M2M — they have sold cellular-enabled security panels for years, and are developing a line of connected home appliances — this move puts them into a fast-moving consumer market, and into direct competition with established M2M value chain players — notably Omnilink Systems.
The big price tag GE paid for Attenti is an indicator that the segment is starting to attract bigger players ready to use M2M to build new revenue streams. I believe the almost quarter-billion transaction — US$ 230 million — is the biggest buy-out so far in the M2M sgement, topping Gemalto’s June acquisition of Cinterion Wireless Modules for € 163 million (~US$ 208 million).
Read more in my guest blog post at Connected World Magazine.
