Skip to main content

Global Market Leaders Invest in the Internet of Things

Current mergers and acquisitions related to the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to break records, according to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research. Moreover, the applications for machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies are already surfacing in numerous industries.

Buyers so far this year have spent $14.8 billion to purchase 39 IoT-related companies, surpassing the $14.3 billion spent for 62 such companies in all of 2014, which itself was a record-breaking year.

Semiconductor-related acquisitions have driven the bulk of spending so far in 2015 with ARM, Intel and NXP each announcing two or more deals largely driven by IoT-related position taking.

The largest deal of the period, the NXP $11.8 billion acquisition of Freescale Semiconductor, was positioned as a consolidation of leaders that will focus its scale and reach on key IoT growth markets led by connected cars.

Other acquirers announcing acquisitions in 2015 included Amazon, ARM, Brocade, PTC, Silver Spring Networks and British Gas.


The IoT Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) data comes from the 451 Research M&A KnowledgeBase -- a database of more than 41,000 technology merger and acquisition transactions across 650 industry segments.

"While the Internet of Things is still in its infancy in terms of industry adoption, the deal-making accelerates unabated, and we see no end in sight," said Brian Partridge, vice president at 451 Research.

According to their assessment, the IT service and infrastructure leaders of the future will require broad and deep competencies in IoT applications, and those strategic bets are being made now.

Furthermore, some segments of the market -- such as open-source software -- may grow faster than others as the demand matures. 451 Research analysts believe that the activity thus far in 2015 left little time to even question their prediction that market forces would accelerate deal activity beyond 2014.

This year's increase in spending comes on the heels of spectacular growth last year. For the full year 2014, IoT M&A spending increased forty-fold from 2013 levels to $14.3 billion -- to put this in perspective, that's almost eight times the total spent by acquirers in 2012 and 2013 combined.

Popular posts from this blog

The Billions Bet on Tentative AI Demand

Gartner's latest worldwide IT spending forecast exposes a trend every CIO has already felt in budget negotiations. Total spending will climb 14.2 percent in 2026, reaching $6.37 trillion. It seems that the IT infrastructure market is simply having a strong year. However, the more useful insight is how unevenly that growth is distributed. The Headline Number vs. The Real Story Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are absorbing capital at a pace several multiples faster than devices, communications services, and traditional IT services. This is not incremental growth spread across a healthy portfolio. It is a wholesale reallocation of enterprise technology budgets toward AI infrastructure, made on the expectation that demand for AI workloads will justify the outlay before that demand has been fully proven. Where the Money is Going Data center systems are forecast to grow 62.5 percent in 2026, that's up from 51.6 percent growth in 2025, reaching $822 billion....