Tile Is Selling Its Bluetooth Tracking Business To Life360 For $205 Million

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Tile popularized marking items and tracking them from your phone with its small Bluetooth tags, but suddenly faces more competition from giants like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung. The company that started out of an incubator and crowdfunding campaign has announced it will be acquired by Life360, which calls itself a "leading family safety platform." The deal is valued at $205 million and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. Tile has developed its product line over the years with a variety of different trackers and partnerships with other companies to use its technology. It also has a subscription service, Tile Premium, with extra features, battery replacements, and insurance against potential losses. However, the game may have changed once Apple and Google started building their own item-locating features into iPhones and Android devices.

Life360 bills itself as an overall family safety app, with location sharing between family members, crash detection, and other features. Over the summer, it announced that it has over 1 million paying customers and reported its valuation had crossed $1 billion. It also acquired another item locating hardware startup, Jiobit, which makes cellular-connected trackers for kids and pets. Life360 expects the deal will increase the global footprint for both companies, Tile's non-Bluetooth Finding Network, and create a larger combined subscriber base. Currently listed on the stock exchange in Australia, Life360 says it has plans for a "potential dual listing in the US" next year.

It's hard to compete

[transporter_ii]

It's hard to compete against people that have unlimited amounts of money. Try being a wireless ISP and having to buy bandwidth from the same company you are competing against. Or, try and lease tower space from one of the companies you are competing against.

I'm in mid-size town and a company here is trying to get into fiber. As soon as they started making plans, suddenly the phone company here is going to start offering fiber.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

There was only ever going to be room for a couple of big tag networks. One for Android, one for Apple. Because being compatible is impossible, of course.

Tile could still be the choice for Android, but seems to have stalled a bit with other players entering the market and slow take up of UWB tech in phones.

Re:

[fermion]

I have a Tile and used it once or twice to find the thing. However I mostly see it as annoyware and it keeps asking for unlimited access. It may be that Apple is abusing an advantage for its products but Tile is phone based and most phones are Samsung. So I really think this is a small market that hasnâ(TM)t fully exploited. I mean, why do they not market a pet collar with an integrated Tile device?

Re:

[teg]

I have a Tile and used it once or twice to find the thing. However I mostly see it as annoyware and it keeps asking for unlimited access.

They need access to location and bluetooth to scan for lost tags (yours and others'). For that, they need to be installed on the phone, and have the users grant such access. Which is good - while we might think that Tile respects privacy and doesn't track you individually, other apps could be far more nefarious so we don't want such permissions automatically, silently, or permanently granted. Apple, OTOH - every iPhone is part of the network that will look for AirTags. Sure, they've designed their "Find My" [wired.com]

Absolutely

[Finallyjoined!!!]

No loss to man, not beast.

IRMC

Re:

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Sodding typing, nor beast...

Tile model

[stikves]

I finally switched to Tile, and they actually had a usable product. It was easy to forget where my keys were during the pandemic, and it really helped.

That being said, they lose on two fronts:
First, they need to have "always on tracking", otherwise the biggest benefit is lost (other people can help find your Tile, it is like a nationwide network of Bluetooth mesh).
Second, they cannot compete with Apple. Especially when Apple does not seem to require asking for permissions (it is baked into the OS), but Tile

Re:

[denis-The-menace]

I have a few tiles, too.

I chose it BECAUSE you didn't need to kill your battery JIC you lost something.

I have ZERO experience on IOS but I'm surprised they won't let you turn off BT/WIFI in-case you'll locate a lost iTracker.