Grizzly Analytics Blog

We're now 2 weeks into 2014, and we've had two acquisitions of start-up companies in the Internet of Things area. One of these deals, yesterday's acquisition of Nest by Google  for around $3.2 billion, will get a lot of media attention because the buyer was Google. The other, last week's acquisition of ThingWorx by PTC  for around $130 million, will get a lot less attention. But it's the two together that are huge news for technology trends in 2014. When we published our first report on Internet of Things in July, 2013, people were saying things like "is the Internet of Things really going to happen," "will people really want it?" and "what's the point?" Now, a half a year later, the Internet of Things is clearly on the way, and people are discussing the implications and concerns . Nest and ThinkWorx are two of the more than thirty companies profiled in our report . They each demonstrate a different approach to implementing ...

Grizzly Analytics analyzes and reports on a lot of technology, but a lot of our attention recently has gone to indoor location technology. (If you're new to indoor location, you can think of it as GPS that works inside.) Here's a quick look at what we predict for indoor location technology in the new year: Proximity beacons will be center stage for the first half of 2014:  Since Apple's iBeacon announcement, companies have been in a race to bring BLE-based proximity beacons to market. These beacons don't actually deliver indoor location positioning, since they don't tell you precisely where you are, but rather they tell you when you get close to a certain place, like a small store, a department in a store, or maybe a key product. Apple has a way of making a concept hot , so proximity beacons are bound to be big for a while. But more than that, they have the advantage of simplicity - they deliver a specific function, namely notifying an app on your phone when you...