by Andy Adelson | 08/11/2025
On August 5th Zebra Technologies entered into a $1.3 billion agreement to acquire Elo Touch Solutions, a leading vendor of touchscreen kiosks, mobile computers and payment solutions with $400 million in annual revenues. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2025.
Though not without challenge, VDC views this acquisition as strategically savvy in several ways. Elo offers Zebra the following:
In announcing the deal, CEO Bill Burns emphasized “the connected frontline” as the most important aspect of this deal. Zebra has been developing solutions to connect frontline workers for years. At this year’s NRF we saw a demo linking sales reps and stockroom staff via a TC53 handheld paired with a WS50 wearable, powered by Workcloud Sync. With this tech, routine requests don’t make reps leave customers. This improves shoppers’ experiences, especially when staff is short. Now Burns frames this as “connected frontline” instead of “connected frontline workers”, which indicates that Zebra’s strategy is to extend this connection to customers. Today’s shoppers are adept at self-checkout and self-check-in. Elo will improve self-service.
While this is most important in Zebra’s statement, VDC believes equally beneficial is access to new markets. QSR, hospitality and gaming are strengths for Elo yet underserved by Zebra. While these are attractive as greenfield markets for Zebra, Elo will also expand Zebra’s hardware share of wallet in established markets such as grocery, healthcare and various industrial markets. Zebra sizes these addressable markets as adding $8 billion to their TAM.
Lastly, Elo aligns with Zebra in several less quantifiable yet important ways. Both are premium brands. Channels overlap, meaning many channel members are ready to represent the tandem. However, some existing Elo partner’s MDF and Co-op funds may be compromised as Zebra integrates Elo and its partners into its partner program. There is a broader opportunity for Zebra to gain greater loyalty among the more POS-centric partner eco-system and challenge established brands with a partner-friendly engagement model, countering the razor-thin margins offered by many vendors today. Financially, Burns commented that both have similar EBITDA models, suggesting this acquisition is unlikely to dilute earnings for Zebra. These points of alignment will help accelerate the integration of the acquisition and ensure its success.
While the acquisition does little to diversify Zebra from its hardware-centric business model, opportunities to wrap services and software around these solutions are abundant. Managing a common Android platform across POS solutions and payment terminals, interactive kiosks and self-service stations and mobile clients lessens the overall management and support burden, offering customers and partners enticing cost of ownership benefits. In addition, with the continued growth of self-service in retail and hospitality – and the shrink issues this introduces – Zebra is well positioned to innovate, especially leveraging recent AI and computer vision investments. In a July 2025 VDC survey of global retailers, 71% say self-checkout solutions have had a moderate to severe impact on shrink and 78% are increasing their loss prevention budgets this year to combat these challenges. (Full research and analysis will be in VDC’s forthcoming Loss Prevention report.) Zebra will likely face some challenges with partners such as NCR Voyix, HP, Fujitsu, Toshiba GCS and others with whom Zebra will now be more directly competitive.