Large inventory of wearable equipment acquisition

* This article is compiled by tech2ipo/Creative Yang Shu

This year is a hot year for wearable equipment. MWC 2015, the manufacturers are competing to release smart hardware, it is not difficult to see, smart watches, smart glasses, as well as a number of fitness tracking devices are in great strides forward. Of course, behind these phenomena, various investment and mergers and acquisitions are also the wind, changing the face of the industry.

Wearable equipment has attracted a lot of VC investment in recent years. A report released last July by CB Insight said the industry's investment in 2013 was 4 times times higher than in 2011, with a compound growth rate of 82% ~124% over the past few years.

But for the industry, the biggest capital gathering comes from mergers and acquisitions by giants. Below, the small series will comb you through the last year in the field of wearable equipment in the most important mergers and acquisitions.

Facebook & Oculus VR

As the largest wearable equipment acquisition of the year, Facebook smashed 2 billion of dollars to acquire Oculus VR. Oculus's products are mainly Oculus Rift, a virtual reality device, which was once an important successful project on Kickstarter platform.

Facebook announced the acquisition on March 25, and Zuckerberg wrote: "For today, mobile phones are platforms, and we're laying out tomorrow's platform." Oculus may become an important platform for the future, changing the way we work, play and communicate.

And Oculus's CTO, John Carmack, also said on Twitter that being bought by Facebook would help virtual reality devices avoid a crisis. For this young virtual reality equipment company, it is a good choice to access Facebook and make more use of its resources.

At the same time, Oculus itself has completed several small acquisitions. In mid-December, the company announced the acquisition of two companies: Nimble VR and 13th lab, where Nimble VR specializes in computer vision and low latency tracking, while 13th LAB is primarily a real-time three-dimensional reconstruction in real-world environments. Two companies will enhance the competitiveness of Oculus and, to some extent, reveal the appearance of their products.

Intel & Basic Science

A few weeks before Facebook completed the Oculus acquisition, Intel announced it would buy Basic Science, a company focused on health-care wearable equipment. The latter's health-tracking watch holds a 7% share of the market.

This is not a closed deal, but according to TechCrunch, Intel bids between 100 million and 150 million dollars, higher than Google, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft.

This is more like a remedy for Intel's relatively weak position in the wearable equipment market today. At present, many of the fitness tracker and other equipment sensors are made by its competitors Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Italian-French semiconductor manufacturing. Compared to a piecemeal approach, Intel's goal seems to be to provide one-stop packaging and related services for all companies wanting to enter the wearable equipment field. It exhibited several similar projects at CES in January.

Facebook & Moves

Another big acquisition that Facebook made last year was ProtoGeo Oy, the maker behind moves apps. Moves is an app that allows users to easily record behavioral logs on the IPhone and Android, which is powerful and connected to more than 40 other apps. The acquisition was announced in April, but the exact amount is unknown.

Facebook has invested a lot of resources, but until recently its App still seems to have failed to catch up with the smart watch platform. There is no doubt that moves is part of this strategy, primarily to ensure that even if one day wearable devices really replace smartphones and tablets, Facebook will still be a part of your life.

Google & Nest

Google made frequent moves last year, releasing Android Wear in the area of wearable equipment and buying Nest in smart homes with $3.2 billion trillion. Nest was born in 2011 to optimize the temperature of the room in a WiFi environment, while achieving energy efficiency, and may also be used as a smoke monitoring device.

Google previously owned 12% per cent of the company and fully acquired it by January. The search giant wants Nest products to be a part of their users ' homes, crawling the smart home market just as Facebook does with smart watches.

Microsoft & osterhout Design Group

At the end of 2013, Techcrunch outgoing news that Microsoft was engaging with Low-profile company, while Osterhout design Group was a low-key military wearable equipment firm. The deal was not passed, but Microsoft acquired intellectual property between 1-1.500 million dollars.

Two companies have completed the patent docking of 6 AR glasses, and 75 docking is underway. These patents cover such things as perspective eye display glasses, a partially reflective, partially transmitted optical element, and a video display modifier, based on sensor input for a perspective closer to the eye monitor.

Microsoft's ambitions for the wearable devices market are unclear, but X should be one of the layouts that can give users a virtual experience that enhances realism. What's more, perhaps the cliché is that this may be another strategic takeover, and Microsoft could get a patent to cut royalties, just as Android did.

Covidien & Zephyr

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Covidien acquisition of Zephyr, if you do not work in the medical equipment field, perhaps have not heard of these two companies. In May this year, Covidien, a health-equipment manufacturer controlled by Medtronic, a pharmaceutical giant, bought Zephyr Technologies, a health-sensing equipment maker.

Zephyr, who entered the field in 2003, is an old company in the young field that now has devices linked to the software that monitor heart rate, respiration, and electrocardiogram. The exact price of the acquisition is not yet clear, but according to Covidien, the company has spent 128 million of billions of dollars on three acquisitions in the past six months, with its clients including NASA and the U.S. military. The acquisition, no doubt, is a Covidien in its area of expertise.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)