I’m thrilled to announce that Particle has acquired one of our closest professional partners — RedBear Labs, creators of the RedBear Duo and a variety of other connectivity boards. This acquisition deepens our hardware design expertise and gives us a stronger foothold in Hong Kong and Shenzhen — the global nexus of electronics design, manufacturing, and distribution.
This acquisition represents a major milestone in the evolution of Particle and a meaningful leap forward in our hardware design capabilities.
In IoT, great software requires great hardware
There’s a common trope in IoT that “the value is in the data”. But the people who say this tend to forget where the data comes from. IoT data comes from IoT devices. And that means that the hardware – connectivity, compute, sensors and actuators – matters.
We’ve learned over the last five years that our software platform – our Device Cloud and Device OS – is only as useful as the hardware that it runs on. If we want to bring on new customers, it’s not enough to make a best-in-class software platform; we also have to make best-in-class hardware.
Since we launched the Spark Core, we’ve launched a new hardware platform every eighteen months. Each generation of products is faster, cheaper, and better than the last one. By doubling down on our hardware design capabilities, we’ll be able to bring you more new products faster.
What competence looks like
RedBear launched their first Particle-powered product, the RedBear Duo, on Kickstarter in November 2015. They said they would ship the Duo to their customers in February 2016, three months later. And they did.
That might not sound all that spectacular, but it’s nearly unheard of for young companies with Kickstarter campaigns to ship on time. I even wrote a blog post about it (back when we were a few months late delivering on the Spark Core). The RedBear team knows what they’re doing, and it shows.
As we got to know the RedBear team, we learned that they are thoughtful product designers that know how to mix a strong product vision with great execution. I’ve greatly enjoyed getting to know Chi, RedBear’s CEO (and now our Director of New Product Development); our ideas about where IoT is going are perfectly in sync. Joining forces felt like a natural next step.
The Proof is in the pudding
Last month, we launched Particle Mesh – the Argon, Boron, and Xenon, our next generation of hardware development kits. What you might not have realized is that these products were a collaboration between Particle and RedBear – the first line of products that we designed together.
When we started talking to RedBear about this product line, we realized that we had all of the same ideas about where to take our businesses. Working with them has been an overwhelmingly positive experience, and it soon became clear that we could accomplish so much more by working together, rather than apart.
What the future holds
Looking forward, we’re immensely excited to work with RedBear to create more groundbreaking IoT hardware, and to develop custom IoT products for businesses around the world. Particle has never been so well positioned to turn the big ideas of IoT into realities.
And I, for one, couldn’t be more excited.
To all you RedBear readers out there, we’d like to extend you a warm welcome to the Particle developer community. And fear not – we will continue to support RedBear’s flagship products throughout 2019 to help its loyal customers transition comfortably.
Here’s to yet another massive leap forward for Particle and RedBear in 2018!
About RedBear
RedBear focuses on hardware for the Internet of Things (IoT), with special interest in embedded mobile and portable devices, and technologies utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Wi-Fi. The company launched its first product, the BLE Shield for Arduino in September 2012. RedBear has released thirteen BLE and Wi-Fi boards, with almost two dozen resellers worldwide. To learn more, visit https://redbear.cc.
