- U-blox stated that the acquisition marks its entry into the IoT sphere
- The company said it acquired Thingstream for 10 million Swiss Franc
- U-blox is a provider of positioning and wireless communication technologies
U-blox, a global provider of positioning and wireless communication technologies, has announced that it has acquired IoT Communication-as-a-Service provider, Thingstream. The former informed that the acquisition will accelerate its path towards achieving unique silicon-to-cloud differentiation.
“The acquisition of Thingstream and its platform accelerates u-blox’s entry into a new dimension of our services business, the IoT Sphere, which will provide customers with a reliable, smart and secure solution to connect sensor data to their cloud enterprise. Our customers can focus on scaling their business rather than the complexities of acquiring and establishing a connectivity platform and maintaining the data flow management,” said Thomas Seiler, CEO, u-blox.
Philipp Bolliger, CEO, Thingstream, said, “By joining our business with u-blox we are further able to accelerate the rollout of our best-in-class, low-cost, low-power and global IoT Communication-as-a-Service solution, this, in turn, enables customers to fast track their IoT deployments with a predictable cost and reliability.”
Thingstream’s message queuing telemetry transport
Thingstream, as the company informed, provides a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for global IoT connectivity using the industry-standard message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol. The product is offered “as-a-service” which provides predictable cost and on-demand scalability for customers.
“MQTT, short for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, has become a widely used data transfer protocol in the Internet of Things, along with MQTT-SN, which is tailored to the needs of sensor networks. Designed for constrained environments characterized by low power and bandwidth requirements, MQTT transmits messages from one device to one or many others via a broker,” read u-blox’s official statement.
It continued, “To achieve reliable machine to machine communication, users can set the quality of service to the specific requirements of their applications. Thingstream’s MQTT Anywhere service offers data transfer across 600+ telecom carriers in 190 countries without necessitating a cellular data plan by transmitting MQTT-SN messages over 2G, 3G, LTE, and LTE-M networks.”
Thingstream’s 26 staff members will also start working for u-blox. U-blox informed that it acquired the company for 10 million Swiss Franc, plus coverage for some deferred staff retention. The acquisition has been successfully closed.
