• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, August 1, 2016

Only a week after it announced that it was going to buy Yahoo’s core business for $4.3 billion, telco giant Verizon is making another huge acquisition in a different direction. Fleetmatics, a telematics company based in Ireland, is to be acquired by Verizon for $2.4 billion in cash.

The deal is still subject to regulatory and shareholder approval.

Should it go through, Fleetmatics will become a part of Verizon Telematics, which focuses on fleet management, mobile workforce solutions and IoT. Fleetmatics has a Web-based GPS solution that allows fleet operators to monitor vehicle location, fuel usage, speed and mileage.

Verizon also just recently closed a deal to purchase Telogis, a mobile enterprise software company, the financial details of which have not yet been disclosed. The sector has been consolidating recently. Some analysts assumed that Verizon would continue to make purchases in the space.

The telecommunication giant is innovating through expansion, purchasing companies that will diversify its offering and position it in the Internet of Things more centrally (and help stabilize its core offering—phone service—which has taken a hit in recent years).

"Verizon and Fleetmatics share a vision that the SaaS-based fleet management solution market is extraordinarily large, lightly penetrated, global and fragmented, which can best be attacked together ...," said Jim Travers, Chairman and CEO of Fleetmatics.