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Berrebi’s latest venture is eDevice, a Franco-American firm that makes technology allowing a single chip to hold everything a device might need to hook up to the Internet via mobile, land lines, radio links or power lines.
Thus, vending machines will be able to reorder when the supply gets low and industrial equipment can warn the maintenance department if anything goes wrong.
EDevice has signed up Lavazza, the Italian coffee firm, for a smart vending machine called e-espressopoint. Other clients include Metering Services, a California firm that plans to produce meters that can send readings to utility companies, as well as the tax administration of China’s Tianjin province, which plans to monitor private businesses’ cash registers.
EDevice, which projects $3 million in revenues in 2002 and expects to be profitable in 2003, does half its business in the U.S.
The Vision Thing: "Every device will be connected to the Internet for servicing, for delivering inventories to vending machines, for control of fraud and for home control. This will be a huge business."
Forward Spin: EDevice is starting with business customers, but the technology is coming to the home soon.
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