AT&T released a report detailing the business opportunities provided by the IoT and providing information on the cost-cutting and revenue-boosting effects of the IoT, it said in a news release Monday. The report highlights several areas where it says the IoT can be used to improve business strategies, including connected cars, smart cities, fleet management and supply chain monitoring, and "identifies insights from industries already transforming with [the] IoT," AT&T said. The company touted itself in the report as the "North American IoT leader," and said more than 25 million connected devices were on its network in Q3 2015 and 1.6 million devices were added to its network during that quarter. AT&T also launched a website to coincide with the release of the IoT report, which "offers an interactive experience showing how every day, objects ... are evolving to help create an interconnected world," it said.

Broadcom is sampling what it called the industry's first 64-bit quad-core processor for high-end routers, it said in a Monday announcement. Its BCM4908 SoC enables OEMs and service providers to deliver the extra CPU power needed for smart home and IoT applications at the higher broadband speeds now coming into the home, it said. By increasing the CPU performance and adding advanced features, the BCM4908 will enable OEMs “to build more powerful home routers that address the increased bandwidth requirements needed to support the continued consumption of high-bandwidth content, growing demand for Ultra HD as well as the growing emergence of more IoT and smart home applications," it said.

Icon Labs is rolling out a security package that enables smart home companies to protect small connected devices against hackers. Currently, home networks rely on the router to stop outside attacks, Icon CEO Alan Grau told us, but many smart home devices don’t include enough protection, such as unique keys or security certificates. Grau cited security mishaps by Cisco in June, where the company warned of default SSH (Secure Shell) keys on its appliances and Microsoft’s warning earlier this month of possible attacks following leaked Xbox certificates. Naked Security reported last month that millions of IoT devices are secured by the same private keys, which Grau compared to a lockmaker using the same key design for every lock it sells. Webcams are particularly vulnerable, he said. A security camera company with 10,000 units in the market could avoid a recall after a hack by using Icon’s technology that securely updates software in all of the cameras, he said. Computers already offer this level of protection through operating system updates, but smart home device processors “are too small to run a big operating system,” Grau said. Icon’s system can be installed in the “brains” of security cameras, home sensors, smart appliances, home medical gear, lighting and door locks, enabling smart home device manufacturers to bring out new generations of consumer products that are “much more secure” than what is out there now, he said.

PsiKick, developer of a self-powered wireless device platform, secured $16.5 million in Series B financing, it said Wednesday. Funding was led by Osage University Partners and joined by existing investors New Enterprise Associates, the University of Michigan Investment in New Technologies Fund and angel investors. PsiKick said its technology building blocks -- wireless connectivity, robust node computation and energy harvesting -- enable scalable “batteryless” IoT. Series B funding will be used to hire additional engineers to develop completely batteryless systems to solve “high impact problems that can’t be solved today,” the company said.

BlackBerry “remains very bullish” on the IoT implications of QNX, the software operating system it bought from Harman International in 2010 (see 1004130093), CEO John Chen said on a Friday earnings call. “We're winning a lot of designs” with QNX, Chen said. “You will see a rollout of demonstrations of new technology as well as rollout of product at CES” using QNX, he said. BlackBerry booked exhibit space on the main CES floor in North Hall and also at the Tech West facility in the Sands Expo Center. By the end of February, the Priv, BlackBerry’s first Android smartphone (see Ref:[1509270001]), will be available in 31 countries, versus four at the end of Q3 ended Nov. 30, Chen said. The Priv launched Nov. 6 in North America, with AT&T having U.S. exclusivity in the U.S. market for 60 days, Chen said. “Although it's early, with less than a month of Priv sales in Q3, we're seeing positive feedback and good demand thus far,” he said. The early Priv sales have been “obviously dominated by BlackBerry customers, but we're seeing some other Android customers” adopt the device, as well as “a small percentage” of iPhone users, he said.

The ULE (Ultra Low Energy) Alliance will do first-time demonstrations of IoT devices, certified products, ULE with IP (6LoWPAN) and AllSeen and OIC (Open Interconnect Consortium) interoperability at CES, it said Thursday. ULE will exhibit in the Smart Homes Tech Zone at the Sands and at the AllSeen Alliance in the Tech Zone, it said. ULE Alliance member company CES participants include Crow, Dialog Semiconductor, DSP Group, Gigaset, Intel, Turkcell and VTech, it said.

“Significant” enhancements to Bluetooth specs will help drive the market for Bluetooth-enabled devices to 4.6 billion shipments annually by 2020, from 2.8 billion this year, said ABI Research analyst Andrew Zignani. Roughly 19 billion Bluetooth devices are to ship over the five-year period, said a Wednesday ABI report. Bluetooth SIG added more than 2,800 members in 2015, and the Bluetooth Developer Studio will help the technology gain traction among developers and speed time to market, especially in IoT applications, Zignani said. Bluetooth is evolving to become a key component of “larger-scale networks” made up of heterogeneous devices, said Zignani. Major upcoming Bluetooth enhancements include a quadrupling of range capacity and doubling of throughput, better positioning Bluetooth for full-home coverage and outdoor use, ABI said. A throughput increase from 1 Mbps to 2 Mbps will reduce latency and increase responsiveness, while providing a “very compelling power consumption ratio” compared with competing technologies including 802.15.4, which tops out at 250 kbps, or the more power-hungry Wi-Fi, Zignani said. Smartphones will remain the bulk of the Bluetooth product market, with 45 percent of shipments in 2020, said ABI, but beacons, smart lighting, home automation and consumer robots will grow to 20 percent of shipments by 2020. The ubiquity of smartphones will allow Bluetooth to take advantage of unique use cases and opportunities compared with competing low-power technologies, said Zignani. Bluetooth is working toward adopting mesh networking within the standard, providing the scalability and range required for wireless sensor network applications, it said, although the timeline for Bluetooth mesh isn’t clear, he said. Chipset suppliers, such as Nordic Semiconductor, are working toward integrating IPv6 over Bluetooth Smart, which will help provide the foundation for IP-based application layer-level interoperability between different types of devices operating on different transport layers, such as 802.15.4 and Wi-Fi, said Zignani. As more device types enter the IoT, adopting a common language will become increasingly important to ensure interoperability and help grow the overall market, he said. The development of Bluetooth and near field communication combination integrated chips can secure provisioning of headless devices, such as smart light bulbs, sensors and other IoT devices, “simplifying the installation process while strengthening the overall security of the network,” Zignani said.

IBM is opening the global headquarters in Munich for the Watson IoT unit, its first European Watson innovation center and the company’s largest investment in Europe in more than two decades, it said Tuesday. In a blog post, Harriet Green, general manager of Watson IoT, said it's “a major down payment” on IBM’s $3 billion commitment (see 1503310032) to IoT over the next three years. Some 1,000 IBM developers, consultants, researchers and designers will work at the Munich campus, described as an innovation lab for “a new class of connected solutions at the intersection of cognitive computing and the IoT.” IBM is adding machine learning, natural language processing, video and image analytics and text analytics to its IoT portfolio for the second wave of IoT that it calls "cognitive IoT," she said. Roughly 90 percent of data gathered by sensors today is lost or thrown away due to bandwidth limitations and security and privacy constraints, said Green, and other unstructured data is available from news websites, call centers, social networks and other sources. Cognitive IoT will enable IBM clients to combine diverse sources of data in real time to understand what’s going on in their operations on a deeper level. Green gave the example of a retail store equipped with video cameras and networked sensors. Using cognitive IoT, a store could communicate with shoppers, who have agreed to be connected via smart phone apps, through speakers that gather information from the conversation, she said. “A cognitive system combines all of this sensor data with information gathered about the local weather and news, social networking streams, and sales trends.” With those capabilities, store managers could understand what’s going on in the store in real time, interact with shoppers, and react to changes, she said. “If it’s raining outside, digital signs in the store might direct shoppers to umbrellas, rain gear or hair-care products,” she said. Video analytics tools discover the demographics of people buying certain items. If a large number of shoppers pick up an item but don’t buy it, machine-learning algorithms can spot patterns to determine the cause. Stores will be able to provide shoppers with “cognitive assistants” -- via their smartphones -- that know them and provide them with “superior in-store experiences,” she said.

Worldwide spending on IoT will grow from $698 billion in 2015 to nearly $1.3 trillion in 2019, an IDC report said Thursday. The Asia/Pacific region leads in IoT spending, with 40 percent of the market, followed by North America and Western Europe, at a combined $250 billion this year, IDC said. In North America, the fastest growing IoT use case is retail marketing, it said. “In-store contextual marketing is growing rapidly as retailers try to capture continuous, real-time streams of data from mobile devices, online customer activity, in-store Wi-Fi routers/beacons, and video cameras in order to gain insight into customer behavior and desires.”

Any 5G deployment will need low- and mid-band spectrum allocations plus high band to enable such applications as IoT, and sizably different infrastructure from 4G, with many more small cell sites, said CTIA Chief Technology Officer Tom Sawanobori Wednesday at an FCBA telecom and wireless committees event. Unlike the traditional spectrum evolution where a technology came first, followed by technical requirements and regulations, 5G represents "a slightly different equation," said Michael Ha, FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Policy and Rules Division deputy chief. The increasing demand for bandwidth for data transmission and the relative lack of unassigned spectrum is pushing the move into the millimeter wave bandwidths to support 5G, Ha said. The spectrum frontiers rulemaking (see 1510230050) is looking at bands above 24 GHz for 5G, and the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference identified some bands for 5G -- though 28 GHz, a subject of the FCC proceeding, wasn't included in the WRC work, Ha said. While numerous incumbent satellite operations already use that spectrum, Ha said, sharing is inevitable: "We know it's not going to be exclusive use." The satellite industry wants to be part of 5G -- such as in potential applications like driverless vehicles -- but also wants assurances and safeguards against harmful interference, said Satellite Industry Association President Tom Stroup. "We certainly are advocates of sharing, where it works." 4G has become ubiquitous in the U.S., with roughly 98.5 percent of the nation covered and traffic on the 4G network expected to sextuple over the next five years, Sawanobori said. Such applications as Voice over LTE are expected to become commonplace as soon as more products offer "high-definition voice," he said. 5G, by contrast, probably won't be deployed ubiquitously across the U.S. due to different business models, Sawanobori said.