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The Internet of Things (IoT) M&A market already reached the value of $ 14.8bn in 2015 which is more than the value reached during the whole 2014 showing an impressive growth.
The Internet of Things research
According to a research published by 451 Research, buyers have spent in 2015 $14.8bn to purchase 39 IoT-related companies, surpassing the $14.3bn spent for 62 such companies in all of 2014, which itself was a record-breaking year.
The largest deal of the period was NXP’s $11.8bn acquisition of Freescale Semiconductor while other acquirers announcing acquisitions in 2015 included Amazon, ARM, Brocade, PTC, Silver Spring Networks and British Gas.
The future of the IoT market
The increase in value in M&A transactions in the Internet of Things does not come as a full suprise if it is considered the trend of increase in value of mergers and acquisitions during the last two years.
The semiconductor-related acquisitions seem to be those attracting more value at the moment. But the Internet of Things is disruptive. This is proven by the entrance in the Internet of Things market for example of connected cars of companies like Google and Apple that were operating in completely different markets in the past.
And indeed as previously mentioned in this blog post, it seems that the connected car market is one of the fastest growing sectors within the Internet of Things. Car manufacturers, technology suppliers and telecom operators are heavily investing in the sector as confirmed by the just announced agreements between Daimler and Qualcomm and between Audi and Baidu in China.
Still too much regulatory uncertainty?
The question is always whether the regulatory framework is going to become a restriction to the growth of Internet of Things technologies or ensure that a more mature safe and cost efficient regulatory framework will grant a high level of certainty to the market to boost even more investments.
And the recent consultation by the privacy regulator on the Internet of Things covered in this blog post will be an important test for the whole industry.
