Actility, a provider of Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) has acquired Abeeway, a geo-location systems developer.
When the two companies combine Abeeway’s patented location software and the innovative products with Actility’s ThingPark platform, they will give Actility a portfolio of IoT location services, set to support service providers and IoT solution vendors across a wide range of industry sectors. The ThingPark services will be accessible through APIs coupled with the bidirectional capability of the LoRaWAN link.
“We’re seeing massive demand for location-aware IoT solutions from industry,” said Mike Mulica (News - Alert), CEO, Actility. “We’ve been rapidly developing our ThingPark Location platform to deliver powerful tools to service providers and our customers in the tracking ecosystem. As a long-time partner with Abeeway, we saw great potential in adding their patented assisted GPS (A-GPS) technology and expertise in tracking to the capabilities of our ThingPark platform. This combination offers game-changing geolocation capabilities from an accuracy, speed, power consumption and TCO standpoint. We’re creating an IoT location platform that will enable a revolution in the logistics and supply chain sector. In fact, we think that geolocation and tracking are potentially the killer app for the whole of the Internet of Things.”
Abeeway makes tracking devices with on-demand geo-location, movement alerts and geo-fencing capabilities. These trackers use GPS signals to determine location, but energy-efficient LoRaWAN communication to pass the information to a tracking application.
Actility said this acquisition provides competitive advantage, by using fewer satellites and reducing the GPS lock time to a few seconds, and reducing power needs by an order of magnitude.
“Since the first LoRaWAN tracker was presented by Abeeway in 2015, Abeeway has continuously improved IoT tracking solutions, developing the first patented low power GPS (A-GPS for IOT) as well as data fusion to optimize localization & power consumption,” said Florian Sforza, founder, Abeeway. “Major players have already selected Abeeway products such as the Master Tracker and Micro Tracker. Becoming part of Actility’s rapid growth will allow us to leverage their market leading LPWA platform and global reach to satisfy the massive market demand for IoT location use cases. Abeeway products will also continue to be available for every LPWAN network.”