Grizzly Analytics Blog

News broke a few weeks ago that Intel acquired Israeli gesture-recognition start-up Omek Interactive.  Omek's technology does gesture recognition based on 3rd-party 3D cameras. Grizzly Analytics wrote almost 2 years ago that Omek was a likely acquisition target. Ironically, we wrote it then in the context of Intel's rumored acquisition of another Israeli gesture recognition company InVision BioMetrics, an acquisition that fell through. We're glad to see that Intel finally found the gesture start-up they want. Intel's interest in gesture recognition is not new.  Besides considering a gesture recognition acquisition almost 2 years ago, they released the video clip below over a year ago, announced a 3D camera recently, and have been researching gesture recognition themselves for years. Their competitors have also been getting into gesture recognition: Qualcomm acquired GestureTek 2 years ago, Apple is rumored to be in acquisition talks with Primesense (another ...

Reports ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) are saying that Singapore-based YFind  was acquired by Silicon Valley-based Ruckus Wireless . YFind, profiled in our report on indoor location positioning technologies , delivers location positioning for WiFi-enabled smartphones, along with user movement analytics for site owners. YFind's core technology positions phones using Wi-Fi fingerprinting running on the smartphones, so it has trouble running on iPhones, because of the well-known iOS problem delivering received signal strength data to applications. But many are speculating that Ruckus Wireless will incorporate YFind's positioning into its Wi-Fi access points, to track locations of any Wi-Fi enabled phone within range.  (We explained the difference between positioning running on phones and in the network in this previous blog article .) YFind's positioning uses more sophisticated Wi-Fi fingerprinting than many others, with probabilistic methods for handling areas between fingerprints and p...

New Report: Internet of Things: How the Vision is being Researched, Developed & Productized The vision of the “Internet of Things,” in which Internet connectivity is extended to huge numbers of “things” in the real world, promises to transform our ability to process information about the real world and interact with real-world objects electronically. This dream has captured the world’s attention, with new developments and media articles daily. But what is really being researched and developed? Are the implementations that are soon to reach market truly achieving the vision? What major companies are working on it?  Who is bringing it to market? What exactly is each company researching? In this new 135-page report, Grizzly Analytics analyzes and reports the research in progress at major technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, ZTE, Qualcomm, Intel, Cisco, General Electric, IBM and others. The report additionally profiles over twenty start-up c...

My article was published on the SeekingAlpha site: While Facebook is king in social but needs to beef up their mobile and location-based elements, Google is king in mobile and good in location-based services, but needs to beef up social. They also presumably want to defend their position in mapping, making it worth a lot to deny Waze to others. But is that really worth the rumored $1.1 Billion to Google, when they already have the most popular mobile mapping and navigation service? Clearly the answer is yes, but the question is why, and what it means for the future. What follows is my pure speculation as to what thinking is behind the scenes and what we can expect. See the whole article here :  http://seekingalpha.com/article/1495052-what-waze-might-mean-for-google  

After months of Waze acquisition rumors, it's now confirmed ( here and here ) that Google acquired Waze. An article on what Waze might mean for Google was just published on SeekingAlpha. Here's a previous article I wrote on Google's interest in Waze. More to come on the implications of the acquisition and predictions of what's yet to come.

The Waze acquisition rumors continue - now Globes is reporting that Google is set to acquire Waze for $1.3 Billion.  This follows the previous rumors of Facebook acquiring Waze , Apple acquiring Waze , and more. See below, after some background, for what I think is the most interesting element in Google's acquiring Waze, which is Waze's potential integration into Android. Here's what I wrote about 2 months ago about the prospect of Google acquiring Waze: Google is starting from the opposite end as Facebook but working towards the same goals - they have the popular mapping and location applications and are trying to gain a strong foothold in social networking. But for this reason, a Waze acquisition would help Google less than Facebook - it would improve what they have and move mapping in a social direction, but since they already have Google Maps, Waze wouldn't be as transformational an acquisition as it would be for Facebook. and here's my follow-up abou...

AllThingsD is reporting that Facebook's negotiations to acquire Waze have fallen through . I definitely think that this is too bad.  As I wrote previously , this acquisition seemed like a great one for everyone. But here's my speculation: I'm not convinced the negotiations are really off . First, there have been rumors of Waze acquisition talks 3 or 4 times in the past year or so.  Each time the rumors have simply faded away, until the next rumors started.  This time the press is being told that the negotiations have fallen apart.  This, in and of itself, is a change. Second, I'm guessing, or maybe hoping, that it's a tactic that one side is using in the negotiations, and that they're still working to reach a deal. In other words, it may be brinksmanship. Third, I still think that Waze would be more strategic, more transformational, for Facebook, than for other potential acquirers. Fourth, with the claim that the deal fell apart because of difference...