The coldest of climates is home to the leaders in the hottest of trends: The Internet of Things.
Motley Fool analysts Eric Bleeker and Rex Moore traveled to Scandinavia to get an inside look at some of the companies involved in this high-tech revolution. Nordic Semiconductor (NDCVF 3.19%) is one of big players in "Silicon Fjord," with IoT-related revenue growing at astonishing rates.
In this video from Norway, Eric and Rex talk more about Nordic, as well as some other companies competing in the IoT space. For instance, Under Armour (UAA 1.76%) is an apparel maker. But the acquisition of MapMyFitness – an online community with 20 million users – signals Under Armour's intentions in the space it calls "connected fitness." MapMyFitness is now integrated with Under Armour's "Armour39" chest strap, which tracks and transmits data in real-time.
A full transcript follows the video.
Moore: Hi, Motley Fool analyst Rex Moore here, along with Eric Bleeker, reporting from Norway -- the fjords are behind us -- and the reason we're here is something that we've heard: It's "Silicon Fjord" instead of Silicon Valley. We saw an interesting company, Nordic Semiconductor (NASDAQ: NDCVF), that is coining that term. Eric, why is that?
Bleeker: The big thing with Nordic Semiconductor is they're actually one of the driving forces behind ultralow power. This is an area that we need, to hook up all the devices that people want to connect to their smartphones, enabling things like wearables.
They are the driving force behind Bluetooth Smart. It's extremely low power, and it enables these applications. When you see things like a Fitbit sensor, or many of these other health and fitness areas, it's because they have these ultralow power chips from Nordic inside them.
We saw, last quarter, 1425% growth -- to give a feeling for how much this segment's grown for the company.
Moore: ... of low-power Bluetooth within Nordic Semiconductor.
Bleeker: Yes.
Moore: Who else is playing in this game?
Bleeker: When you're looking at the kind of trends that they're riding, it is very much growth in the first wave of wearables, which is fitness and health. That went from $40 million in sales in about 2009 -- those devices like wristbands and different things -- all the way to $1.2 billion expected this year, so that is some serious growth.
The companies that you're looking at -- a lot of privately held companies -- but also on the publicly traded side Under Armour is looking to get more into this, Nike has a very robust group of sensors and devices, and finally I would look at a company like Garmin, that's also trying to make moves.
I think we're still getting at least 30% growth this year, and there's quite a bit of innovation in the space.