Would it make sense for Tesla to buy Lyft?

This morning, after hearing about Tesla’s “big announcement” coming this afternoon, I speculated on Twitter that maybe the electric vehicle iconoclast was looking to buy ride-share firm Lyft.

It would definitely be a “new product” for them. But I was wrong, mea culpa.

Turns out it’s a new battery pack, a longer range, and a new “ludicrous” mode that will allow Teslas to be the fastest production cars on the road. All noble things, and worthy of announcing, if not necessarily worth building up so much beforehand.

But…what if?

Lyft has reportedly spurned a bid from current partner GM a week ago. GM plans to rolls out their new electric Bolt via Lyft as part of this partnership, and Tesla’s Model 3 competes with the Bolt.

Since that news, rumors have also emerged that Lyft had also reached out to Apple, Google, Amazon and competitors Uber and Didi to discuss a sale.

Uber founder Travis Kalanick told his investors that Lyft wasn’t worth more than $2 billon, despite having a reported $1.4 billion cash in the bank.

Lyft slapped him and said they really didn’t want to go to the M&A prom anyway because they’re washing their hair that night. Recode reported that everyone has a price, and even with a valuation estimated at $5 to 6 billion, Lyft’s was reportedly $9 billion.

Kalanick also said he didn’t want the anti-trust issues that would ensue, but it’s not entirely clear if the two money-losing unicorns mating publicly like this would warrant federal scrutiny.

“(A merger) could take the pressure off margins for the combined company,” one fund manager who follows next-generation auto tech told ReadWrite. “But then it really just looks like a cab company with an app. We have those already. There’s no real monopoly, in most markets, in their core business today that would damage average buyers’ power.”

So if Lyft’s looking for an exit, Tesla may be the sign on that door.

It’s hardware versus software…again

The intersection of several trends and technologies may soon provide the place for Tesla and Lyft to collide.

Electric vehicle growth will likely be spurred by autonomous vehicle development, and carmakers from Volvo to Ford to Musk himself are now counting the time until a fully autonomous car hits the road in months, not years.

Add to that a sharing economy increasingly treating car ownership as a commodity and not status symbol, and it could become a challenging time to sell $135,000 electric cars no matter how awesome. And they are, without a doubt, awesome.

And it’s an interesting time for the entire “next-generation” auto industry as a whole, as it becomes clear that humans will not be behind the wheel in the future, or even if there will be a wheel in the future.

While this may seem mind-blowing to most car owners today, it’s just a new chapter in the Silicon Valley story of “Hardware vs. Software.”

In this corner, Team Hardware. It’s made up of virtually automaker on the planet, including Tesla, as well as car parts makers, agricultural and construction equipment companies, trucking firms, and ship builders. They’re looking for what happens next, and all roadsigns point towards “metal-as-a-service.”

Whether it’s an entire vehicle or just some of its components, the decades-old relationship with buyers for these huge brands is being unpacked by the new sharing economy audience and broken down into the basket of services that their products actually provide.

Think of all of the advertising you’ve watched over the years from carmakers. Now, the attachment to the idea of owning a certain type of car, or a certain brand of equipment, starts to look gauzier by the day.

In the other corner, Team Software. That includes the ride-hailing giants like Uber and Didi, flush with cash but concerned everyone will figure out “oh, it’s just a cab company, kind of.” Add in Google, Baidu, retailers like Amazon, and shippers like FedEx — who’ve always looked at their fleets as dots on a global last-mile logistics planning map.

Those deliveries don’t happen without wings, wheels or hands. Or possibly, whatever appendages drones will use.

An integrated delivery ecosystem, whether it delivers a person or package, is their end game. If that means a new dimension in fleet management, so be it.

Add to that all of the safety concerns, regulatory needs and data infrastructure issues, and it’ll be a wild time take a ride — or even cross a street  — in the coming years.

The fight is on to win the $560 billion self-driving car market

The autonomous car market will grow to an eye-watering $560 billion in the coming years, but many firms will end up road-kill in thae race for market share.

The Detroit Bureau point out a new study by consulting firm AT Kearney estimates the market for autonomous vehicles will grow to $560 billion over the next 20 years.

Researchers surveyed 150 executives from tech, automotive and communications industries as part of the study. They found that, while the connected car market will eventually be huge, it will take two decades to overcome significant barriers to growth.

“While industry players have already developed or tested many of the technological building blocks, tough and tricky legal challenges remain, including new laws on accident liability, on where self-driving cars may operate, and on who may have a license,” AT Kearney said.

“Also, new traffic guidelines have to be developed for autopilot and for fully autonomous driving. The incentives to establish the right legal framework are high, and executives in our study are confident this framework will develop, probably with California as the pioneer,” the report added.

Are self-driving regulations the real traffic jam?

This comes against the backdrop of concerns that America could become a disjointed patchwork of incompatible and competing regulations for self-driving cars.

At this early stage in the technology’s evolution, many players are jockeying for position in an increasingly crowded field.

But AT Kearney cautions that as the market matures, many players in the self-driving vehicle race will end up crashing and burning along the side of the road.

“Manufacturers face hard questions as they jockey for position — from thinking about their value propositions, which core capabilities they need, and which players they should partner with, to developing business models that offer the best go-to-market strategies and the best chances to win,” said the report.

All of the major car manufacturers are already well committed to developing self-driving car technology.As well, many of the leading tech firms are competing as well.

Taxi market disruptor Uber is busy testing autonomous cars as part of a strategy to eventually integrate them it its ride-sharing fleet. And search giant Google continues to expand its autonomous vehicle testing program in a bid to remain the U.S. leader in the burgeoning technology.

Will MLB players’ union play ball with wearables?

The Major League Baseball Players Association is worried about the effects wearable use on and off the field will have on players.

It follows the MLB approving two wearables, the Zephyr Bioharness and Motus elbow sleeve, which log heart-rate and strain on arms, respectively.

Some union representatives and players have argued that wearable data collection could be used to bench players that don’t get enough sleep or have a bad day on the practice field. Others suspect that MLB teams may use data to lower the contract value of players.

New York Mets Curtis Granderson, a MLBPA representative, said: “It’s a matter of how much access will we have to it?’ How much [access] will the team have to it? What will be done with it?”

Several players voiced similar concerns about the longevity of data collected and how it can be used by MLB teams. In the current state, coaches look at the data post-game and evaluate performance and health.

MLB players worried about off the field monitoring

Players are also concerned that teams will force them to wear the devices outside of work, to track their health and fitness at home. This could seen as a major invasion of privacy. Rockies catcher Nick Hundley said that it may lead to a Philadelphia Eagles situation under Chip Kelly, where most of the team left during the two years due to invasive technologies.

MLB is trying to ensure unions that evaluation of performance or health risks will not come up during contract signings, but players seem to not believe the directors in charge of making the game fair for players.

If a team fails to provide adequate data protection, it may lead to players asking to be removed from the team or taking the wearables off during games. MLB players have already expressed certain disdain for tech entering the game, and this season will be jam packed with wearables to add to all of the technology already assessing player’s capabilities.

Could IoT be inviting malicious software into your home?

It’s no secret that we here at ReadWrite love the Internet of Things (IoT). This is our focus, and one of the most interesting sectors of em1erging technology today. However, it’s far from perfect. Security issues have long been a concern for IoT, and a recent speaker at the Black Hat technology and security conference shed light on exactly why those concerns aren’t just prudent, they’re often justified.

When you attend Black Hat, the devices you carry with you are about as insecure as they ever could be. A lot of attendees only bring systems with them that are sterile of private information and easily formatted afterwards. Connecting to a public network here is about as advisable as playing Marco Polo in a pool of sharks. Attendees carry cash instead of credit cards, notepads and pens instead of laptops, and often they even leave their driver’s license behind.

But what about IoT devices? These devices have their own software baked in and, by design, give their users a very limited level of control over what they connect to and how.

When Eyal Ronen, a graduate student from Israel, has spent time researching the security of Philips Hue lighting systems. During his research, he was able to build a solution that tricked Philips lights into connecting to his network instead of the one they were presently assigned. He worked out a method to circumvent the 10-20 meter range limitations for controlling these lights and control them from 20-70 meters away – long enough to send signals from a passing car or drone.

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He demonstrated this vulnerability during a session he presented at during Black Hat. His demonstration involved controlling a couple lamps located just off stage, but it offered attendees insight into just how easy it is to circumvent the security of some IoT devices.

The impact of an insecure IoT

The IoT is data driven. Information is continuously being shared between devices and most of them are doing this in a way that the human users never actually see on a screen. When our desktop computers are hijacked and become part of a bot net used by spammers and DDoS attackers, the evidence of this can be exceedingly difficult to identify.

If an IoT device is compromised, how would we know, and how would we be able to correct it? What would you do if your smart oven suddenly started sending spam on behalf of a scammer? These are problems that could cause a lot more heartache than light bulb flickering or baby monitor hijacking.

That doesn’t even take into account the possible implications of a smart door lock or a surveillance camera being hacked. Medical equipment is another big security concern, especially if malicious code running on the device(s) results in inaccurate measurements and/or action.

So, what does this mean for us? For one, it means that the Internet of Things still has some growing to do. For all intents and purposes, IoT solutions are in their infancy and have yet to be thoroughly tested.

Back in May, we published a two-part piece on the sorry state of IoT security. From this demonstration out of Black Hat, it’s clear that we still have a ways to go before we can fully immerse ourselves in a world of connected everything.

Wearables making a big splash in Olympic swimming this year

It’s been another wild year in swimming at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The last events wrap up today, but it’s been hard to miss the appearance of more technology poolside this year, even if all you noticed were the headphones helping Michael Phelps maintain his death-stare:

But getting into the zone while on deck isn’t that new. Getting closer to a world record is the greater goal of all this new technology. Here’s what you might have seen in swimmer’s bags this year:

The Misfit Shine

In June, wearables company Misfit and well know sports swimming brand Speedo announced the launch of their second Speedo-branded activity, swim, and sleep tracker,Misfit Shine 2 Swimmers Edition. Misfit and Speedo’s proprietary lap counting algorithms track a swimmer’s lap count with industry-leading accuracy and work for all stroke types.

New features with Speedo Shine include:

•  A vibration motor and multicolor lights, enabling multi-faceted user feedback—see progress and tell time in a halo of rainbow-colored lights, or get motivated with Misfit Move activity
• A countdown swim timer—users pick a time to swim and Speedo Shine 2 provides a gentle vibe alert when a workout is complete
• Text and call notifications and a silent vibe alarm
• Misfit Link compatibility, turning Speedo Shine 2 into a music remote, selfie trigger, presentation clicker, or button to enable a variety of smart home devices and web services

VTT wearable sensors

In cooperation with Finland’s national  swimming team and archery association, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed wearable technology for improving sports performance. Wearable sensors can be attached to, say, a swimmer’s hand paddles or an archer’s equipment. From there, data is wirelessly transferred to the coach’s smartphone or tablet.  

The sensors embedded in the paddles provide surprisingly precise and varied data on the wearer’s swimming technique. This covers stroke length and changes in it during swimming, the relationship between the outward stroke and recovery, the structure of the stroke and the average pull, the hand position and the pressure exerted by the stroke in different directions. According to Simo Karvinen, the Finnish Junior Olympic Team coach:

“Swimming is an unusual sport because it is not easy for the athlete to check his or her own performance in the water. In addition, very few means are available of measuring development in the swimmer’s technique, in terms such as the efficiency of hand strokes. VTT’s technology provides a means of directly observing the power of each hand stroke and its trajectory through the water, without disrupting performance.”

Using sound data to boost performance

Researchers at Bielefeld University have developed a system that professional swimmers can use to optimize their swimming technique. It enables swimmers to hear, in real time, how the pressure of the water flows created by the swimmer changes with their movements. This gives the swimmer an advantage over their competitors because they can refine the execution of their technique. This “Swimming Sonification” system was developed at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) of Bielefeld University.

Dr. Thomas Hermann of CITEC is working on converting data into sounds that can be used to benefit the listener. This is called sonification, a process in which measured data values are systematically turned into audible sounds and noises. “In this project, we are using the pressure from water flows as the data source,” says Hermann. “We convert into sound how the pressure of water flows changes while swimming – in real time. We play the sounds to the swimmer over headphones so that they can then adjust their movements based on what they hear,” explains Hermann.

This system includes two gloves worn during practice, featuring thin tube ends that serve as pressure sensors and are fixed between the fingers. The tubes are linked to a measuring device that transmits data about water flow pressure to a laptop. Custom-made software then sonifies the data; it turns the information into sound. The sounds are transmitted to the swimmer in real time over headphones. When the swimmer modifies a movement, he hears live how this also changes the sound.

In a practical workshop held in September 2015, professional swimmers tested the system out and confirmed that it indeed helped them to optimize their swimming technique. Of the ten swimmers who participated, three of them qualified for international competitions, and one of the female swimmers is competing this year at the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The researchers want to continue developing their current prototype. “We are planning to develop a wearable system that can be used independently by the user, without the help of others,” says Thomas Hermann. In addition to this, the new sonification method is planned to be incorporated into long-term training programs in cooperation with swim clubs.

Samsung blind cap

Samsung’s latest innovation is  a special swimming cap that vibrates to alert the swimmers precisely when to do their flip turn at the end of the pool. The Blind Cap eliminates the need for a coach or guide to physically tap the swimmer with a pole to indicate the lane coming to an end — the method used since swimming for the blind was established as an official Paralympic sport in 1960.

The Blind Cap is equipped with a vibrating sensor and Bluetooth technology. It synchronizes with the Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch and any Android smartphone to work in conjunction with an app. This allows the swimmer’s coach to send a warning signal from their smartphone or smartwatch, which is converted into a vibration within the cap of the blind swimmer, prompting the swimmer to turn without additional help.

What about swimming googles?

Evidence suggests that connected googles are indeed on the way but seem to be taking longer in manufacturing than anticipated. OnCourse Googles is created googles designed for open water swimming (ok, so technically these are more for the World Aquatic Games than the Olympics) to help keep the wearer swimming in a straight line using a pair of subtle LEDs. The goggles analyze the direction the user is swimming and if they veer off course. LEDs notify them of which direction they need to swim in order to remain on course as well as the severity of deviation.

These were predicted to be launched in the summer of 2016 but remain absent. Israel based startup Instabeat has also created smart googles that specifically measure a swimmer’s heartbeat. However they’ve been subject to significant delays of over two years and are pledging to go to retail in Q1 2017.

In a sport where the difference between winning and losing is a hundredth of a second, there are no doubt boxes of technological innovations that are kept under wraps by the Olympic teams.

We’ll probably only become aware of these if medalists and their media machine sponsors, decide to share the word.

Can a wearable allergy-proof your child?

Having food allergies can be a real drag. For millions of Americans dealing with food allergies, going to a restaurant or eating at a friend or family member’s house comes with the risk of being unknowingly put in contact with something you are allergic to.

Folks with severe peanut allergies have to be careful not only to order foods without peanuts in them, but to be wary of the fact that in a busy kitchen foods often come in contact with one-another. Many restaurants even post signs letting customers know that certain ingredients are used on site.

So, what is the alternative? You could avoid restaurants and family dinners, or you could carry around an allergen testing kit that tests the food you eat for target proteins that you need to avoid. While these kits can certainly help reduce the cases where accidental exposure to allergens in food resulted in hospital visits, not everyone with a food allergy wants to carry around a portable science lab to test their food.

Allergy Amulet – great answer or liability magnet?

Enter the Allergy Amulet, a small, elegantly designed wearable that looks like jewelry and contains testing strips that enable you to test your food for allergens in seconds. The device, a wearable that can serve as a fashionable amulet when worn around the neck, with a bracelet, or carefully tucked away in a specially-designed smartphone case is used with disposable testing strips that, when inserted into food, can detect the presence of allergen proteins in as little as 1-2 parts per million.

The strips are made with molecularly imprinted polymer that contains the impression of a target allergen protein. These protein molecules can then become trapped in these channels, sort of like a lock-and-key, resulting in a chemical reaction that alerts the Allergy Amulet to the presence of an allergen. The amulet then alerts the user so they can avoid what could be a risky snack.

This device would act as part of an overall strategy for preventing allergen exposure. The user would still need to remain vigilant about what is in their food. What this technology can do is help to reduce the number of accidental exposure that happens from hidden allergens that are present in prepared foods that the diner, waiter, and possibly even the chef are unaware of.

In theory, this is an incredibly useful technology. There is still a lot of work to be done, however.

Currently the technology is being tested with peanut allergens, however plans are in place to create strips that target other problematic ingredients such as egg, gluten, soy, shellfish, and more.

There are also huge legal hurdles to contend with. This is being designed as a potentially life-saving device, and its users will undoubtedly become reliant on it as an additional measure of protection. Accuracy is absolutely critical to the Allergy Amulet’s success.

With over 6 million children estimated to suffer from food allergies in the United States and over 200,000 emergency room visits each year resulting from contact to allergens, devices like the Allergy Amulet could provide much-needed peace of mind.

Ford pumps up Velodyne; will double Silicon Valley team in a year

Automotive giant Ford has pledged to double the size of its Silicon Valley team by the end of 2017 and also invested $75 million into Velodyne, which sells LiDAR (light imaging, detection, and ranging) sensors for cars.

The dual announcements show an increase in commitment to technology inside cars, especially autonomous tech. Ford is behind the curve compared to Tesla, Google, and rival General Motors, which has acquired its own autonomous startup, partnered with Lyft, and plans to build a huge tech center.

Ford’s Silicon Valley operations currently employ 130 engineers and scientists, this will rise to 260 by the end of 2017. It will expand the campus from 30,000 to 180,000 square feet.

“We will have one of the largest automotive presences in Silicon Valley by the end of the year,” said Ford CEO Mark Fields. “We really want to be part of the community. We view ourselves both as an automotive company and a mobility company.”

Mobility is a buzzword that a lot of automotive firms have been using the past year. It suggests that automotive firms, like Silicon Valley, think autonomous cars will reduce car ownership and increase taxi services.

Ford: Self-driving tech is this century’s “assembly line”

Fields expects autonomy to be a major deal, he said to CNBC’s Squawk Box: “Autonomous vehicles could have just have as significant of an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago.”

The other announcement is a little less exciting, Velodyne and Ford have been partners for some time. Ford’s $75 million investment signals that Velodyne will be a key supplier of LiDAR for its self-driving car. Search engine Baidu, which is building its own self-driving system, also invested in the company.

It is not Ford’s first Silicon Valley investment either, in May it invested $182 million in Pivotal, a software development firm that worked on FordPass.

That said, it still hasn’t completed a major acquisition for a tech startup. That might be necessary for Ford to get a lead in the autonomous car race, or it could partner with Google, which was rumored in 2015.

Tesla fatality can’t dissuade NHTSA from self-driving upside

Despite a fatal crash setback for the self-driving car industry, the leading U.S. car safety regulator said it is standing behind autonomous vehicles.

Automotive News reported on a conference with Mark Rosekind, chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. During the conference Rosekind indicated that the U.S. government would not pull back its support for research and development into self-driving cars.

Rosekind’s comments come after it was revealed that a Tesla S-model car was involved in a fatal crash this may. At the time of the Florida accident, the car was using autopilot software which is designed to take over driving of the car so that the driver can take their hands off the steering wheel for periods of time.

NHTSA opened a formal investigation into the crash of the Model S, though the government chose to say little on the ongoing Tesla probe.

“No one incident will derail the Department of Transportation and NHTSA from its mission to improve safety on the roads by pursuing new lifesaving technologies,” said Rosekind.

NHTSA wants to know what accidents have been avoided

He continued by saying that his agency still sees a strong future for self-driving car technology, which has the potential to reduce 94% of vehicle accidents caused by human error.

The NHTSA previously said it was releasing safety guidelines for self-driving cars by July 14. However, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx changed the timeline by saying that these won’t be released until “late summer.” The guidelines being developed by NHTSA were to stipulate conditions for the deployment of autonomous vehicles and how they are to behave under various conditions.

Rosekind said that the agency would ensure that autonomous autos would be “much safer” than human pilots before they are allowed to tear around U.S. highways. However, he chose not to quantify how much safer they must be before the threshold is crossed and self-driving cars get the green light.

“If we wait for perfect, we’ll be waiting for a very, very long time,” said Rosekind. “How many lives might we be losing while we wait?”

The comments by government officials come amid concerns that the fragmentation of the U.S. regulatory environment for self-driving car testing and deployment is putting America at a disadvantage compared to nimbler governments around the globe.

Michigan approves millions for autonomous car testing facility

The State of Michigan approved a $17 million loan to build a 311-acre facility for autonomous vehicle testing on Wednesday. The loan will be used to purchase unused land at Willow Run, which used to be owned by General Motors and was a Ford bomber plant in WWII.

It will be one of the largest facilities dedicated to autonomous vehicle testing. The American Center for Mobility (ACM), which will run the facility, plans to add faux houses, traffic lights, and other urban features to simulate real life events.

Funding will be provided by the Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF). It has already spent $2.8 million on the ACM, bringing the total to $20 million. The investment group says that the ACM intends to pay back the loans over 30 years, though it didn’t mention how it plans to make money.

Automakers, universities, and other autonomous vehicles firms will be invited to test vehicles in the facility. The University of Michigan already has MCity, an 18-acre site, but may move or merge the facilities in the future, considering the huge size of ACM.

Members of the Michigan congressional delegation called on Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to certify ACM as a national testing and verification facility, in the hopes that it would receive federal funding.

Foxx has not commented on the facility.

Funding for autonomous car facility a good start

The $20 million is a good start for ACM, but it wants an additional $60 million to complete the facility. This will include tunnels, bridges, and cul-de-sacs, making it the perfect facility to validate if a self-driving car is truly fit for the road.

Private investors may make up some of the investment, but the state of Michigan is pushing hard for federal funding to make up the difference.

Several automakers and tech firms have ongoing autonomous tests in the U.S., including Google, Tesla, Uber, General Motors, and Ford, but most of these are done on public roads with a driver inside the vehicle.

In a controlled environment, these firms may be able to test fully autonomous vehicles without a driver inside, or where the driver doesn’t need to keep his eyes on the road and can watch movies or sleep. That could be useful for advanced tests on self-driving systems behavior in certain situations, without worrying about fatal injuries.

What are the challenges of ideation in IoT?

Manufacturers of products across the consumer spectrum have by and large read the writing on the wall by now: go IoT, or go home.

In the near future, pretty much everything more complicated than a paper clip will assume the prefix of ‘smart’, and join the ranks of connected, communicative, hitherto inanimate objects.

As this process continues to unfold and products are overhauled to stay relevant in an IoT world, it will behoove companies to remember that a product ceases to be smart if manufacturers don’t plan, or ideate, with certain elements of usability in mind. Sure, you can call anything “smart” by slapping it with sensors and a Bluetooth module. But is it actually smart for your company and your consumers?

There is a difference between being connected – and being smart. Smart product design and development involve several key factors on the user-facing side of things which must be taken into consideration.

 The overarching principle when considering usability of your smartened product is not maximizing the amount of platforms to which it is compatible, or even how seamlessly it syncs with the internet in general. Chief on your list of concerns should be how operational aspects will affect and engage the end user. Unintuitive? Perhaps, but to prove this we can look to any tech gadget of the last 20 years, well before IoT took over. Products that succeeded – and of course I’m looking mostly at Apple here – were those whose tech advances were surpassed only by their intuitive and easy usability.  

Usability features are critical

Great care should then be taken when considering these usability features. The location, shape, material, and placement of electrical components can greatly affect overall design, and subsequent consumer reception. Similarly, manufacturers must have a deep understanding of smart component pricing so as to build a cost-effective IoT product and keep prices reasonable for customers. Integrating the world’s most premium electrical components can add a competitive edge to your brand, but an unaffordable final product will defeat the entire purpose.  

Finally, before moving on to production, you must experience the smart capabilities of your new product and iteratively operate, test, re-evaluate, and optimize all components – placement, electronics, behaviors, and performance – until you are positive that your dream product is coming to life as expected. Naturally, this step entails a working prototype of your smart product.

IoT-adaptation is a fascinating science of equipping the tools of yesterday with the intelligence of tomorrow, and this leaves plenty of opportunity for creative functionality overhaul. By making the right decisions in usability, components, and design, manufacturers can steer their products into the coveted zone of global consumer ubiquity.

The author co-founded Seebo in 2012 and serves as the CEO. Previously he successfully launched and managed Playfect with his brother Liran, delivering value to investors, employees and the market. His innate understanding of complex technical issues combined with an ability to analyze markets has allowed him to intuit “where the ball is going” – especially in the rapidly changing field of IoT.

Could Blackberry have a real chance in IoT?

The world may be melting down into Brexitian chaos, but for a company like Blackberry that’s the least of its worries. After all, customers already voted themselves out of Blackberry’s ecosystem years ago, choosing to embrace Apple’s iPhone or Google’s Android phones. Brexit is just one more kick in the teeth for a company that has struggled for years to regain relevance.

And yet…there are signs of life at Blackberry.

The most important sign is the Internet of Things. While every company is pretending to have an IoT strategy these days, Blackberry actually has the raw materials necessary to build a highly relevant IoT business.

Chasing a niche is a good plan

To be honest, it has been years since I last thought about Blackberry, either as a vendor or as blog fodder. I didn’t want to use their phones and I couldn’t muster any energy to write yet another eulogy for the once powerful company.

So when I saw that Larry Dignan had penned a piece suggesting that Blackberry Radar could fuel a turnaround, I was surprised but intrigued. Larry is a smart guy. Why would he bother writing about a corporate corpse?

Blackberry Radar is an “end-to-end, Internet of Things (IoT)-based system that monitors the location of trailers and containers and delivers timely, actionable data to transportation managers via a secure, online portal.” In one sense, it’s a niche solution for the Transportation vertical. Even though Blackberry CEO John Chen rightly calls out the “there are anywhere between three million to 12 million [truck] trailers currently in the U.S. alone,” a fraction of which (14 to 20%) with telematics services attached to them, it’s still hardly something worth going long on BBRY as an investment.

Does Blackberry have the right IoT assets?

However, it’s not so much Blackberry Radar of itself that is interesting. Rather, it’s that Radar reminds us of the systems expertise that Blackberry has honed over decades.

For example, Chen went on to talk about QNX, the embedded, real-time operating system that has been around for eons, and sits at the heart of Blackberry’s connected car platform:

We’ve built and operate a secure end-to-end system to deliver over-the-air software updates to cars, to automotive, automobile. This technology is a growing imperative for automotive OEMs, with the average vehicle nowadays using about 60 million to 100 million lines of software code. Our solution will help the auto industry provide proactive maintenance update, without time consuming visit to the repair shop. This solution has been derived from our technology for updating 50 million mobile phones in over 100 countries.

If that sounds like exactly what is needed to operate a powerful, sophisticated IoT network then that’s because it is.

It Just Works

Two years ago I wrote about how a lack of standardization in IoT would make open source an imperative. While that shift toward open source is happening, it’s also true that developers and the enterprises they serve are hungry for workable platforms that can get them started faster. That’s where Blackberry comes in.

Companies have been calling out for someone to solve the Wi-Fi, real-time location tracking, bar codes, mobile and GPS-related IoT problems they have. Blackberry, because of its years building out a massive smartphone network, coupled with its QNX experience, has this in spades.

So today it’s right that Blackberry should start with an isolated market like trucking logistics. But there’s no reason that this same system, and its underlying assets, can’t power a whole host of other IoT projects in vastly different markets. Could this be the start of a Blackberry resurrection?