Hubble, provider of end-to-end IoT connected solutions, enables leading brands and hardware manufacturers to rapidly integrate and connect new products to the cloud. Tom Barltrop, VP of Products & Services at Hubble Connected, says the company’s core market is in OEM services. At the moment, Hubble is providing the connected service for a number of well-known home and business brands. Hubble’s strategic relationships include major OEM manufacturers such as Binatone, Tatung, Vtech and Midea.
Will the camera be distributed under the Motorola brand?
Hubble provides the connected service for a series of WiFi cameras from a number of household brands in the home, baby and pet categories including the full range of monitors from Motorola.
A core part of Hubble’s IoT solution is our suite of integrated modules, which support a wide-range of fully developed profiles, and which has enabled us to rapidly scale – by offering these services to an increasing number of new and existing partners.
Through these modules Hubble supports the most relevant IoT technologies; such as Wi-Fi for our IP cameras, BLE for a tag that will integrate with our new range of Motorola cameras, GPS for our dog collar, and ULE for our range of VTech smart home devices.
Besides connecting cameras, what else do you support?
We believe that Hubble has the most comprehensive support of device profiles available today. Hubble Connected phone and web apps connect a whole range of sensors and devices from kitchen appliances, home security, pet devices to children’s toys.
How long ago was Hubble Connected launched?
Hubble officially launched a little under two years ago and is the culmination of the coming together of four companies under one umbrella – all with the strategic goal of being the premier supplier of IoT Connectivity to OEM partners. In addition to our headquarters in Hong Kong, we also have regional offices in London (UK), Bangalore (India), Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), and Victoria (Canada).
How do you see the growth for Hubble Connected this year?
In the last year we have added a number of key OEM partners to Hubble Connected’s strategic alliances – bringing the total number of products shipped by our partners to over 150 million units per year. We expect that at least 70% of these products will be connected by 2020.
We have also continued to grow our position in the IoT community by becoming a proud member of the AllSeen and ULE Alliances as well as Thread Group, which will make our partners’ devices interoperable with products from a large range of other leading brands.
More recently we announced our global agreement with Vodafone, as a Hubble cellular partner. This is helping us to keep up with the huge growth we have seen in the cellular connected range of IoT products; which is an area we have seen a huge amount of interest in amongst our OEM/ODM partners.
Regarding your partnership with Vodafone, does it include smart home devices?
Whilst our partnership with Vodafone is initially focused on cellular tracking, as demonstrated through our work on our dog collar, we are already working on a number of smart home devices, and already have a number of exciting announcements scheduled for Q4 2015, as this technology becomes more ubiquitous.
In terms of hardware, does Hubble work exclusively with third-party manufacturers?
A lot of OEM manufacturers don’t have the expertise, the time or resources to quickly integrate their devices to the cloud. We have invested our time into developing a complete range of IoT profiles and supporting modules that allow manufacturers to quickly onboard their major brand partners.
Is network camera your current priority?
Network cameras are now mainstream and already boast heavy adoption rates. More recently however, through our partners we have seen that the next area of expansion will be LED light bulbs, tracking devices and home/business sensors. As such, providing our partners with the ability to control a complete range of profiles associated with these devices is currently where we are dedicating a lot of resources.
What is Hubble’s competitive advantage when compared to others?
Our complete list of over 30 supported profiles such as temperature, remote set, tracking and zoning, combined with ready-to-go off-the-shelf modules and a full SDK/API stack is where our current strength is. Hubble can quickly onboard new development paths for major manufacturing partners by providing a full set of documentation and a test bench to bring their products to the connected space.
Who are your OEM targets?
Hubble is not currently looking to partner with start-up IoT businesses. As a company we focus exclusively on large established manufacturers delivering significant volumes to the global market. Due to our significant investment in servers based out of China, Russia, India as well as the western economies we see ourselves as one of the very few truly global IoT connected companies.
Product Adopted:Software