Alcatel-Lucent acquisition by Nokia would provide leadership in Mobile based IoT innovation

Nokia announced its plan to acquire Alcatel-Lucent at $16.6 billion. The acquisition would benefit its current market position in telecom equipment business. The acquisition would also provide leadership in mobile based IoT innovation.

M2M (Machine to Machine) and D2D (Device to Device) communication technologies are the key enablers for emerging mobile based IoT (Internet of Things) applications. As the number of patent applications is a good measure of innovation activities, to evaluate the M2M and D2D innovation activities, the patent applications covering of key technologies for M2M and D2D communications are analyzed. More than 1300 patent applications that are the essential patents for mobile based IoT are identified 1Q 2015 (ref.  http://www.techipm.com/alexdb/M2M%20&%20D2D%20Patents%20for%20IoT%20Data%201Q%202015_Intro.pdf).

The merged Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent ranked third, just behind LG and Ericsson and ahead of Samsung.

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M2M & D2D Communication Patents for IoT Innovation Ranking

M2M (Machine to Machine) and D2D (Device to Device) communication technologies are the key enablers for emerging IoT (Internet of Things) applications.  Recently several telecom operators are deploying LTE based M2M (LTE-M) and D2D communication services as a new profit center.  Furthermore, several global standardization bodies including ETSI, 3GPP, oneM2M are actively working on the technical and service standard specifications of M2M and D2D communications.

As the number of patent applications is a good measure of innovation activities, to evaluate the M2M and D2D innovation activities, more than 4000 issued patents and published applications in the USPTO obtained from keyword search are reviewed.  Patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each patent are analyzed as to whether the contents are within the scope of key technologies for M2M (e.g. low power design & management) and D2D (e.g. discovery process) communications.  

More than 850 including 150 issued patent applications are identified as the essential patents for M2M communications as of 1Q 2015. Among 58 IPR holders, LG is the leader followed by Ericsson, InterDigital, Samsung, ETRI, and Qualcomm.

More than 450 including 59 issued patent applications are identified as the essential patents for D2D communications as of 1Q 2015. Among 28 IPR holders, Nokia is the leader followed by LG, Samsung, Qualcomm, ETRI, and BlackBerry.

Combining M2M and D2D, there are total of more than 1300 patent applications that are the essential patents for IoT communications. Among 61 IPR holders, LG is the leader followed by Ericsson, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nokia, ETRI, Huawei (including FutureWei Technologies), Intel, and InterDigital.

For more information, please contact Alex Lee at alexglee@techipm.com .

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