The Internet of Things does not exist only in the digital world, and the technology that goes into paper mail is not as simple as one might imagine. That's why Pitney Bowes, a manufacturer of machines for sorting and handling mail, announced Tuesday that it is partnering with General Electric. Leveraging GE's Predix software, designed specifically for industrial IoT applications, the firms are collaborating on a set of applications for Pitney Bowes' enterprise business customers. Pitney Bowes sells mail-processing equipment to a range of customers, from the United States Postal Service to small and midsize businesses and very large enterprises. The fruits of …

CSR announced that its CSRmesh technology was used by SK Telecom to enable a range of smart LED lightbulbs which also function as Bluetooth Smart beacons networked together using CSRmesh. This combination of lighting, beacon, and mesh functionality is a world first, CSR said. The intelligent CSRmesh lighting system will allow an almost unlimited number of smart lightbulbs to be simply controlled and networked together in-store while also enabling location-based special offers and targeted information to smartphone users. The system uses LED lightbulbs that fit into a building’s existing lighting fixtures to provide a mesh network of intelligent lights that ‘double-up’ …

Digital security company Gemalto has joined forces with China Telecom to develop a proof-of-concept for subscription management in connected cars. The technology will be based upon Gemalto's LinqUs On-Demand Connectivity (ODC) subscription management solution. The companies are planning to integrate the ODC solution in vehicles, which will facilitate China Telecom's automotive customers to offer instant connectivity on cars. According to Gemalto, China is one of the world's fastest-growing automotive markets, and it has high demand for advanced telemetric, navigation, and safety features in vehicles due to traffic congestion and other concerns such as driver safety. The company said that with embedded SIMs …

The Internet of Things (IoT) - the idea that most physical objects will be connected online - will be more disruptive to retailers than anything else seen to date, reports Gartner. The analyst has published a report on the topic, advising retailers to invest in advanced analytics to keep up with the IoT revolution. However, along with a new release published by managed IT service provider Prism Solutions, it raises interesting questions around how retailers and IT resellers could actually generate revenues from the technology.

Qualcomm said Tuesday it is working with Thread Group, a Google-backed effort to determine ways for Internet-connected devices to talk to one another. The move is important because Qualcomm has been a key backer of the AllSeen Alliance, one of several competing efforts to set standards for the so-called Internet of Things. By taking part in Thread as well, Qualcomm opens the door for potential cooperation and collaboration between the two bodies. The Internet of things, like the actual Internet of today, depends on a single set of standards rather than multiple, competing ones. After all, no one wants a connected …

At a Target store in downtown San Francisco, customers walk through a transparent model home, where simple actions trigger a chain of reactions: The crying of a baby elicits soothing music, which prompts coffee to brew in the kitchen. Outside the acrylic mock-up, consumers experiment with new products at one of 24 "deep dive" interactive stations, which show the functions and capabilities of the technologies they just experienced. Target Corp. opened the experimental shop, called Open House, last Friday in an effort to expand its growth in connected devices. Known by techies as the Internet of Things, or IoT, connected technology links household …

For Internet of Things projects to be successful, they need a strong human vision behind them. "People with M2M knowledge are a scarce resource," Vodafone's director of machine-to-machine, Erik Brenneis, said at an event in London this week. Indeed, 26% of respondents in Vodafone's M2M Barometer 2015 cited lack of knowledge as a potential barrier to the increasing use of M2M by their business (see chart).

UK inventors are being offered up to £10m by the UK government to solve some of the nation's urban challenges using the so-called 'Internet of Things' technology. The new competition from Innovate UK, the Government's innovation arm (formerly the Technology Strategy Board), has called on businesses of all sizes to look at problems in the transport, healthcare and energy sectors and come up with Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

Earlier this year, Samsung Electronics' fourth quarter results showed that its mobile business continued to drag down the rest of the company's yearly profit down by nearly one third. These results was after the company reported in the third quarter net profit tumbled by 49 percent, again impacted by company's mobile business, which at the time saw quarter-on-quarter sales revenue tumble 15 percent to 23.52 trillion won ($22.3 billion). But according to Todd Lynton, Samsung Electronics Australia business solutions director, Samsung still believes that the company's mobility business is still core to its operations, and there are no plans of slowing down in the …

The Internet of things is here, and both Best Buy and Flextronics are trying to adapt to this shift, their CEOs said onstage at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech event in Aspen on Monday. Hubert Joly, Chairman and CEO of Best Buy, is taking a page from IBM and emphasizing services instead of just retail sales. He offered examples of the Internet of things invading consumers’ homes in the form of streaming media on televisions and over connected speakers such as Sonos systems. Connected alarms and home automation also ranked high on his list.