Nordic Semiconductor has expanded its presence in South America with a new sales and technical support agreement with Brazilian consulting firm BP&M. The chipmaker reckons “IoT is on a roll” in the region with “massive deployment of cellular IoT” and “increasing focus on short-range wireless”.
BP&M’s regional headquarters are in São Paulo, in Brazil; the firm has a presence in “many key locations” across the country, it says. It will provide third party sales and technical support throughout South America for Nordic’s portfolio of cellular and short-range IoT hardware, firmware, development tools, and reference designs.
Nordic Semiconductor said: “IoT is developing rapidly in South America, with massive deployment of cellular IoT and an increasing focus on short-range wireless solutions across both established market verticals such as transportation and metering, as well as emerging sectors including home and building automation, industrial IoT, and agriculture.”
It quoted “analysts” that the number of connected IoT devices in Brazil is forecast to total almost 416 million by 2023. BP&M has assigned a dedicated field application engineer (FAE) to support IoT developers using componentry from Nordic Semiconductor, through design, development, prototype, and production.
Robson Tenedini, business development manager at BP&M, said: “Our partnership with Nordic, backed by our technical support capability provides developers with the confidence they will receive comprehensive assistance, in their native language, whenever they need it.”
Scott Hensley, sales manager for Nordic Semiconductor, in the Americas region, commented: “IoT is on a roll in Brazil, and with BP&M’s dedicated FAE, backed by our technical support team in the US, every developer in South America can have complete confidence they will receive the same support as any other customer worldwide.”
Nordic Semiconductor’s portfolio comprises: the nRF9160 system-in-package (SiP) with integrated LTE-M/NB-IoT modem and GPS; the dual-core nRF5340 system-on-chip (SoC) with support for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Bluetooth mesh, NFC, Thread and Zigbee; and the similarly-specified nRF52833 SoC, which incorporates direction finding as well.
Nordic Semiconductor has recently added artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to its Bluetooth IoT chips, to bring contextual insights at the very edge on low-power IoT devices. The move follows a partnership with US-based Edge Impulse, which makes miniaturised machine learning (or ‘TinyML’) tools for chips in resource constrained IoT modules.
It has recently acquired Ensigma, the Wi-Fi division of UK-based semiconductor and software design firm Imagination Technologies Group, for an undisclosed fee. The deal is for Ensigma’s development operations, including most of its staff, and tech assets and intellectual property.
As well as Wi-Fi, the Trondheim-based firm has announced a partnership with chipset makers Qorvo to collaborate on dual-mode IoT products running low-power short-range Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and ultra wideband (UWB) technologies. The deal follows Qorvo’s acquisition of Ireland-based UWB pioneer Decawave in February.
