BlackBerry hosted a live unveiling of their newest smartphone, the KEY2, this Thursday. The company’s marketing strategies and messaging show that BlackBerry is aiming squarely at business professionals with its KEY2 smartphone. While this is the right move it may also be their only move. The KEY2 is very similar to the KEYone, however, does offer some improvements to the keyboard, memory configuration, rear camera and overall design. Learn more

Without competitive software, even the most advanced industrial PC (IPC) hardware will be left behind in the industrial IoT. As industry 4.0 advances, IPC manufacturers are being forced to adapt their offerings, tooling, and support to embrace the IIoT. Most IPC manufacturers are quickly expanding their strategic alliances with various software vendors, boosting the abilities of their hardware offerings in order to meet the needs of smarter and more connected industrial environments. Read more

In their WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) this Monday in San Jose, California, Apple unveiled a host of new software for their iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac that will be made available to the public later this year. The newest operating systems are the iOS 12 for iPhones and iPads and MacOS Mojave for Apple’s laptops and desktops. In addition to flashing their newest products and updates, Apple addressed iPhone addiction and data protection, thereby seizing the WWDC as an opportunity to paint themselves as a company that cares about the consumer. Learn more

In Part 1 of our NIWeek 18 blog, we featured an overview of some software-focused product announcements from National Instruments: LabVIEW 2018, LabVIEW NXG 2.1, and FlexLogger In Part 2, we continue the overview with a look at InstrumentStudio and SystemLink. Read more

The VDC embedded team was recently in Austin, Texas to attend NIWeek 2018 – National Instruments’ 24th annual conference. For a broad overview of this show, please see the related VDC View from Dan Mandell “NIWeek 2018: Instrumenting Industries for Intelligence”. As always, the event brought together leading customers, thousands of engineers, and other industry experts to hear the latest announcements and highlights of NI’s role in supporting cutting-edge test and measurement deployments. Read more

Direct sales over the internet currently generates less than 2% of the revenue for proximity sensors, photoelectric sensors, and limit switches. But use of this sales channel is forecast to grow at an average of 24% annually through 2022. This rapid expansion in the use of e-commerce by proximity sensor suppliers is disrupting market dynamics of a segment that has long been slow to evolve. Learn more

ServiceMax concluded its annual conference this week, in which the company showcased its offerings, the benefits it drives for its customers, and its partner network. CEO Scott Berg led the keynote address, which covered ServiceMax’s new features and its achievements over the past year. Berg encouraged attendees to consider three questions throughout the conference: how to optimize when service occurs, how to make the most of IoT, and how to engage with proactive and predictive maintenance. These issues tie together some of the most important issues and priorities in field service. Learn more

In the early days of the IoT, many industry participants had assumed that nearly all IoT device data and sensor data would be sent to the cloud for storage and analytics. As large scale implementations began to run, the sheer volume of raw data generated by IoT systems made it apparent that significant portions of data needed to be filtered and/or pre-processed to reduce the volume of data sent to the cloud, as well as latencies that might occur in sending and processing data in the cloud. Thus the concept of IoT edge computing was born. Read more

AWS showcased its constantly-evolving services portfolio at its 2 day AWS Summit London, a regional conference supplementing its annual flagship re:Invent in November. Day 1 centered around AWS developer and startup education, while day 2 featured a keynote by CTO Werner Vogels and UK & Ireland Managing Director Gavin Jackson. Read more

Hannover Messe 2018 took place from April 23rd through April 27th at the Hannover Fairground in Hannover, Germany, and was held in conjuction with CeMAT 2018, a trade fair centering on intralogistics and supply chain management. This year’s show drew approximately 210,000 attendees and featured 5,000 exhibitors from 75 countries including the 2018 official partner country, Mexico. Though attendance was down from last year’s record 225,000 visitors, the fairground’s five million square feet of exhibition space remained jam-packed from open to close each day. Learn more

While a decent chunk of retail organizations over the past few years have been increasing their in-store and online sales via investment in Omni-channel initiatives to keep up with the likes of Amazon, retailers like H&M have fallen behind. This can be seen most notably in H&M’s struggle to sell off $4.3 Billion of unsold inventory. As a way to combat their inventory problem H&M has been increasing the amount of markdowns they have, but this in turn has led to slipping sales and more importantly, lower profits. Learn more

This interview is part of an ongoing series VDC conducts with IoT and embedded solution providers to share views on their company, products, and state of the market. At Mobile World Congress in February 2018, the new company 1NCE announced a cellular-based NB-IoT communications service for the revolutionary price of only 10 euros for 10 years of service with up to 500MB of data transfer. Read more

MODEX is the premier tradeshow for supply chain and logistics solutions, powered by the MHI and held biannually in Atlanta, GA where industry leaders in AIDC and robotics display their latest technology. This blog will detail the latest announcements and provide commentary on the newest innovation unveiled at MODEX 2018. Read more

This interview is part of an ongoing series VDC conducts with IoT and embedded software solution providers to share views on their company, products, and state of the market. Nils Herzberg is the Global Head for the Go to Market Strategy for Internet of Things & Strategic Partnerships. Reporting to the General Manager for IoT & Digital Supply Chain, he drives major elements of SAP’s partnership strategy, customer strategy, and OEM strategy as well as focus scenarios, market units, and industries. Read more

As a global leader in enterprise labeling solutions with over 5000 customers in over 100 countries, Loftware Inc. aims to extend and synergize its global capabilities with its acquisition of UK based company and artwork management solutions provider, GAP Systems. This combination of enterprise labeling and artwork management solutions is poised to drive innovation and offer singular enterprise platform for labeling and packaging artwork requirements. Read more

VDC analysts Chris Rommel and Roy Murdock attended IBM’s new flagship conference Think 2018, held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. IBM rolled a few of its previous conferences such as InterConnect, World of Watson, Amplify, Edge, and PartnerWorld into one mega conference attended by almost 40,000 customers, partners, and executives. Read more

In Part 1 of our MWC18 coverage, we featured info from the Mobile IoT Summit, and VDC’s pick for our Embeddy Award from the show. In Part 2, we highlight a selection of notable vendors on the trade show floor, as seen by VDC’s Roy Murdock and Steve Hoffenberg. Read more

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, IoT products and services took a giant leap forward. Unlicensed spectrum LPWAN products and services for IoT communications (such as LoRa, Sigfox, and Ingenu) have been available for several years. In prior years, offerings for licensed spectrum IoT services such as LTE Cat-M1 (a.k.a. LTE-M) and NB-IoT were mostly in the discussion and demo stages. Now, the sheer volume of announced IoT wireless modules and services for the licensed spectrum has ramped up, and many are already on the market. Read more

VDC Research will once again be attending Hannover Messe, the world’s leading trade show for industrial technology. This year’s show—which takes place from April 23-27 at the Hannover Fairground in Hannover, Germany—will feature more than 5,000 international exhibitors, 1,400 lectures and panels, and 200,000 attendees. Among the industry trends expected to emphasized by exhibitors, lecturers, and panel members at Hannover Messe 2018 are Industrie 4.0, integrated energy, smart supply, predictive maintenance, cobots, lightweight construction, and the digital twin. Learn more

Last week, the embedded engineering community migrated to Nuremberg, Germany for the 16th annual Embedded World conference. Embedded World is the epicenter of the IoT and embedded technology conference calendar with all of the global juggernauts coming together in one place to launch new products, unveil strategic collaborations, and set the future of embedded engineering. Read more

VDC Research attended the Embedded World 2018 conference in Nuremberg, Germany through three days during the week of February 26th packed full of face-to-face meetings with dozens of exhibitors. This year’s event was the 16th Embedded World conference and it continues to grow as the leading exhibition for global IoT and embedded technology providers. 1,021 companies from around the world exhibited throughout 6 massive halls and showcased to more than 32,200 embedded experts from 78 countries. Read more

VDC Research attended the Embedded World 2018 conference in Nuremberg, Germany through three days during the week of February 26th packed full of face-to-face meetings with dozens of exhibitors. This year’s event was the 16th Embedded World conference and it continues to grow as the leading exhibition for global IoT and embedded technology providers. 1,021 companies from around the world exhibited throughout 6 massive halls and showcased to more than 32,200 embedded experts from 78 countries. Read more

Wearable solution providers are discovering the importance of focusing on the business benefits that they can provide. It is not enough to offer a flexible platform upon which customers can build – wearable companies must work with partners and prospective customers to learn what metrics their solutions can improve and map a specific path to those goals. Many wearables companies have not approached the market with a business benefit framework, and these organizations have become mired in “pilot purgatory.” Appealing to forward-thinking research and development units, many wearable companies expect prospective organizations to view their products as enabling new workflows and driving business benefits. Learn more

Embedded Tech Trends 2018 highlighted several important trends impacting the markets for critical and intelligent embedded systems. Embedded Tech Trends is an annual business and technology forum where technology suppliers and media come together to discuss technology advancements, standards, and other important topics for anyone developing boards, systems, and software for critical and intelligent embedded computing. This year’s event was hosted last week in Austin, Texas with a focus on the “biggest technologies and brightest solutions” behind high performance computing problems in mission-critical environments. Read more

In Part 1 of our post about CES 2018, we looked at the rise of automotive technology at the show. In Part 2, we’ll discuss how and why consumers adopt smart home technology. And we’ll do so through a specific lens: five different products we saw at CES that can monitor and/or control the flow of water through the pipes. Unlike a Nest Thermostat or a Samsung Family Hub Smart Refrigerator, most visitors will never know these plumbing-related products are installed in the home. They have no bling value. Just to reiterate, we’ll be discussing these products as examples primarily to help illustrate the reasons consumers purchase smart home devices. Read more

Checkpoint Systems Inc. (a division of CCL Labels), a leader in electronic article surveillance (EAS) and RFID solutions for the retail industry, announced two new product offerings at the recently concluded NRF conference in New York. Thus, this blog will detail the latest products and the company’s outlook for the retail space in 2018. Read more