Reza Kazerounian talks IoT and Makers (Part 1)

Reza Kazerounian, Senior VP and GM of the Microcontroller Business Unit at Atmel, recently sat down with the folks at EEWeb to discuss a wide range of topics including the Maker Movement, the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) and the future of Atmel’s MCU business.

As Kazerounian notes, the IoT is a combination of multiple market segments, tens of thousands of OEMs and hundreds of thousands of products.

“It is seen by many as the next wave of dramatic market growth for semiconductors. If you look at the different estimates made by market analysts, the IoT market will be worth trillions of dollars to a variety of industries from the consumer to financial, industrial, white goods and other market segments,” he explained.

“Companies that provide cloud-based services, service providers and semiconductor companies will also benefit from this market. The number of small or new companies that are showcasing connective devices has increased – there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020. These nodes will have characteristics such as low-power embedded processing, a human-machine interface and connectivity.”

That is precisely why Atmel has consolidated the most complete portfolio of IoT technologies: ultra-low power microcontrollers, wireless connectivity, touch controllers, touch materials (XSense), sensor management and security.

“These key IoT ingredients combined with Atmel’s development environment, culture and global support infrastructure will enable us to offer the broadest and most comprehensive IoT solutions in the industry,” he said.

“Atmel is a leading supplier in embedded processing. We compete in the low-power technology market segment because many of the near-home devices have been around for many years and have the ability to be connected wirelessly. These devices include gateways such as routers, access points and more.”

Kazerounian also discussed Atmel’s relationship with the burgeoning DIY Maker Movement which espouses an open hardware philosophy.

“More designers are initially starting with [Atmel-based] Arduino boards for their prototypes, and these designers will eventually become our customers. The Maker community is continuing to grow and is influencing how designers jump-start their first design to accelerate their prototype development,” Kazerounian continued.

“This trend will potentially increase ROI. Atmel is seeing an increase in professional engineers relying on [Atmel-based] Arduino boards to create initial models for their prototypes. The net impact of the Maker movement is the accelerated development of products which contribute to the overall IoT market growth and will ultimately benefit Atmel.”



Note: This is part one of a two-part series. The second installment can be read here.