Emteria, maker of industrial version of Android, raises cash from HTG and Runa Capital
Emteria, is a startup that emerged out of the limitations of the official Android Open Source Project. AOSP just isn’t good enough to be used in industrial applications which means if industry wants to use it, the platform must be extended and customized. Some industries still use outdated platforms like Windows CE to power things like ticket machines, for instance.
Emteria developed emteria.OS, an adapted Android operating system for industrial settings. As a result of its work, the startup has now raised €1.5 million in funding from the German state-backed High-Tech Gründerfonds and Runa Capital, based out of San Francisco.
While Android is the most popular OS with 2.5 billion active Android devices, pure-play Android isn’t suited to an industrial environment, where you can’t access Google Play Services, vendors’ centralized updates and have to limit the user-accessible functionality.
Emteria.OS can be used to power ticket scanning devices, cashier desks, ticketing machines, smart home controllers, video conferencing and alarming systems – or whatever a customer has in mind. They also get personalized branding, security updates, and ongoing support from the emteria team. emteria.OS is now used by over 75,000 сustomers.
Dr. Igor Kalkov, founder and CEO of emteria said: “The B2B market has so far failed to maximize the Android platform even though it has reached a market share of more than 70% for mobile operating systems. In the B2B environment, this development leaves much to be desired. Our vision is to free industrial devices from their individualized software, just like the mobile revolution.”
He said currently, software service providers often offer development contracts, but generate source code which the customer can’t do anything with, outside of the contract. Development contracts are also expensive and result in 100 companies cooking 100 different Android distributions.
Daniela Bach, Investment Manager at HTGF, said: “We are very convinced of this technology’s potential in the field of industrial operating systems.”
Dmitry Galperin, Partner at Runa Capital, added: “The team has reached great success among the Raspberry Pi community by developing an important layer for device configuration and management not available from the open-source Android. We believe that emteria will continue to attract more IoT developers.”
Emteria, is a startup that emerged out of the limitations of the official Android Open Source Project. AOSP just isn’t good enough to be used in industrial applications which means if industry wants to use it, the platform must be extended and customized. Some industries still use outdated platforms like…
