Huawei’s sales have been dominating headlines lately, but those are the sales of its smartphone division worldwide. What about the rest of the company, which is actually very big in wireless technology? It looks like its time for that division to make headlines, as Huawei looks to be jumping into the Internet of Things, which is looking to be one of the next big tech races. In the short the Internet of Things is just a fancy term for having everything connected together, including appliances, roads, street lights, etc. It’s a way to centrally control and manage all the aspects of your life, and it’s going to take a lot of work for this network to become viable and operable.
That’s where Neul comes in, the UK-based startup that Huawei just acquired. Neul is well-known in the wireless industry for creating the UK’s first wirelessly connected smart road that uses spectrum based on white spaces, or the spaces inbetween the TV channels VHF and UHF. This spectrum is unused throughout the world now, and as such is ripe for the picking for new technological needs like the Internet of Things. Huawei’s purchase of the company really shows that they are ready to jump into this head first, and it’s just in time given how Samsung has started their big push into the world of wirelessly connected devices.
Based out of Cambridge, Neul will continue to employ the same group of people before Huawei purchased them, including CEO Stan Boland at the head of the group. Huawei intends for Neul to become the hub for all their new technology related to the Internet of Things, and it shows with this $25 million purchase. This is good news for Cambridge as a whole too, as it brings a large investor into the area to build business up, and keeps things local instead of just buying the technology and shipping it back to China.