If you are regular reader you know that I have been talking about consolidation in the m2m marketplace. Friends with money have been looking at the various ways to roll up the business and get economies of scale.

Here are some of the implications of what acquisitions:

Intel won’t let Apple (News - Alert) get away.

The purchase of Infineon’s wireless assets makes it so that Intel just became the top dog again in Apple’s arsenal. As you will recall Apple has been in the chip business from time to time with PowerPC and other strategies. Infineon is the chip set behind the IPad, IPhone, IPod, etc. It also has been used in several Android devices.

The Infineon acquisition does two things for Intel. One it makes them a powerhouse in the smart phone business and secondly it marks their acceptance that WiMAX (News - Alert) is on the decline. Don’t get me wrong it will serve them well in many areas, but when it comes to the smartphone market LTE will be the future.

The good news is that WiMAX is ahead of the curve. IMT 2000 completed the WiMAX 2.0 announcements will be reduced while the LTE (News - Alert) – TD announcements will be on the rise.

The bad news I would not expect Intel to continue pushing the envelope of WiMAX. The best in the WiMAX space is by far Samsung. Samsung is a powerhouse , but most of their innovation does not need a specific technology to be adopted.   However if Intel wants to take a strong position expect that some aspect of Flash Memory becomes better integrated into the next generation of chips.

Speaking of Next Generation

3M acquired Attenti, which is minor acquisition in comparison to Infineon, but is a huge indication of what is happening in the market.

First of all, we should not call it a next generation system. We should call it a last generation system because of what they do. These systems are used to track people. It is used in Prisons and Elder care, and we will ignore any opportunity to draw the comparison between the two environments.

However, We can point out that Attenti is a platform designed for multiple technologies as well. 

We should also point out that 3M has an interesting history of reinventing itself. Like IBM they build up best practices that become lines of business in their own right, so the acquisition of Attenti is probably going to enhance some of the services they already provide with security. Earlier in the week 3M had bought Cogent (not the one we know, but the fingerprint company).

When I go visit customers, as a consultant, I tell them Andy Grove’s statement “Only the Paranoid, Survive” is more like the Oracle (News - Alert) at Delphi’s warning to Oedipus. The realities are that we have to adapt to the change and not cling to our past. Intel and 3M are seeing the money to mobile opportunities.