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M2M FEATURE NEWS

The M2M Week in Review

By Patrick Barnard December 11, 2009
Welcome to the TMC M2M Week in Review, a round-up of the past week’s news published on IoTevolutionworld’s M2M Evolution Web site.

On Monday, Dec. 7, MiX Telematics, a provider of fleet management and vehicle tracking solutions, announced the launch of MiX Mobile, its vehicle tracking application, for Apple’s iPhone. The company is one of the first players in the telematics industry to release vehicle tracking technology for the iPhone. To date it has reportedly sold more than 500,000 fleet management and vehicle tracking systems worldwide and is now getting into the mobile application market. The solution is available at the iTunes store.

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On Tuesday, Dec. 8, ClimateMinder, a company that designs complete wireless sensor-controller network solutions for maximizing agriculture productivity and profits, announced that a growing number of California growers are using ClimateMinder for Open Fields, a next generation self-adapting wireless mesh system that provides real-time monitoring, control and management of water utilization for open-field agriculture. ClimateMinder for Open Fields utilizes an intelligent, fail-safe mesh network of wireless sensors and controllers that can be installed quickly and cost-effectively throughout an entire field, orchard or vineyard. With this wireless mesh solution, there is no need to deploy a PC in field facilities or wires between sensor nodes or controller nodes. ClimateMinder helps growers save water, driving higher yields, quality and profits for their crops. It also enables them to optimize growth patterns, increasing their productivity and product quality, while shortening the time to market.

Also on Tuesday, Deutsche Telekom AG and Cinterion Wireless Modules GmbH announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership. Together the two companies will focus on the joint management of M2M customer projects and the sustainable development of the M2M marketplace. The agreement will enable the two suppliers to pool vertical market know-how and systematically strengthen their position in the global M2M landscape. The two companies intend to market innovative M2M products jointly from early next year.

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On Wednesday, Dec. 9, Giesecke & Devrient, a supplier of SIM cards, announced a new collaboration with SIMCOM and u-blox, both manufacturers of M2M solutions. Specifically the companies have incorporated special SIMs, which has been specifically developed by G&D for the M2M market. The Swiss module manufacturer u-blox has integrated G&D’s VQFN8 SIM with activated phone number in its ready-to-use u-blox C16 GSM/GPS reference design for telematics applications -- and Shanghai-based SIMCOM has integrated G&D SIM cards in two of its modules, including the SIM5218, which can send and receive data via UMTS, HSPA and EDGE.

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On Thursday, Dec. 10, Digi International announced that its Spectrum Design Solutions, a wireless consulting group and a leading embedded cellular integrator, is developing M2M designs using Qualcomm’s Gobi modules. Spectrum Design Solutions will be working with Qualcomm to promote such M2M designs, as well as Qualcomm’s Gobi technology. According to a release, Spectrum expects to help customers reduce time-to-market of Gobi-enabled wireless M2M products by up to 50 percent.

Also on Thursday, AT&T announced that SmartLink from OutdoorLink, Inc. an all-weather programmable device for outdoor advertising, has been certified to operate over AT&T’s wireless data network. SmartLink is a wireless M2M lighting controller which is designed to be suitable for the outdoor advertising industry. It allows outdoor companies to turn off unsold faces of display plus track and monitor power outages remotely. The controller also enables power restoration, check on bulb outages and get daily proof of performance from display, OutdoorLink officials said in a release.

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Friday, Dec. 11, was a quiet day for M2M news (we’re in December, in a recession year, after all), however IoTevolutionworld’s Carl Ford wrote a great feature entitled “Charging AT&T and the iPhone: iAccuse” in response to a recent report from AT&T that 3 percent of the iPhone customers located in San Francisco’s bay area and New York’s metro area are generating 40 percent of the traffic on AT&T’s 3G network – consisting primarily of downloading videos and Web surfing.

“While this a large problem for AT&T, the Internet itself has been morphed by the video industry as it developed content delivery networks to overcome the end users passion for P2P solutions. CDNs now make up a large percentage of the backbone Internet traffic,” Ford wrote in his feature. “But cloud computing, CDNs and the wireless network have not found a happy medium yet, and AT&T is looking for solutions to manage the migration.”

To read Ford’s interesting feature about the future of AT&T and the iPhone, click here.

Also be sure to read Paula Bernier’s in-depth feature on the current state of the M2M technology market, “M2M Shows Momentum in Consumer, Business Vertical Applications,” published in the November edition of Internet Telephony magazine, and published this past week to the magazine’s Web site. Bernier is the executive editor of Internet Telephony magazine and in this feature she interviews Hamish Caldwell, executive director of product marketing management at AT&T Business Solutions, about the on-going changes in the blossoming M2M technology market.
 
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Learn more about M2M technology at the M2M Summit, an event collocated with ITEXPO East 2010, to be held Jan. 20 to 22 in Miami. This is the event you need to attend if you want to understand the role that IP communications technologies will play in the blossoming M2M market. Register now.
 

Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for IoTevolutionworld, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to IoTevolutionworld e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Patrick Barnard
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Group Managing Editor, IoTevolutionworld

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