Here is a French nugget, whose story is interesting. Company founded in 2008 by Eric Careel (Wikipedia), it designs, develops and markets Connected Objects (IoT) in France such as scales, pedometers and connected watches. Very early on, their development team approached the players in the health field to offer solutions that are relevant from a clinical point of view.
This attracted the attention of Nokia, which bought for 170 million euros in 2016 from Eric Careel Withings to transform it into Nokia Health in 2017. This takeover is seen as the new proof of the deficiency of the French system in the funding system of its nuggets, or even the lack of vision necessary for the creation of an ecosystem allowing them to develop to become major players in the digital world (May 9, 2016 François Némo – Frenchweb)
However in 2018, Nokia decides to separate from this branch, the purchase would have been overestimated by 140 million euros. Of all the candidates in the running, it was ultimately the founder of Withings who bought his company from Nokia for 30 million euros (04 May 2018 by Wassinia Zirar TicPharma). One may wonder in the end, if the Nokia episode did not show that above all, it lacked a vision on the part of the group?
Indeed, since the takeover by the original founder, Withings continues its path in connected objects, offering an increasingly complete range in the field of connected Health / Well-being: Scales, Connected watches with activity monitoring and heart rate, Connected blood pressure monitor, Connected thermometer, sleep tracking sensor, etc. A new example of this fever of innovation, the announcement at CES 2020 of their new connected watch, the ScanWatch which makes it possible to detect apnea from sleep and atrial fibrillations, again caused a sensation (Usine Digitale -06 Jan 2020 – Arthur Le Den). It arises as a serious competitor of the Apple Watch, with the advantage of my point of view which is an exceptional autonomy … It is also awaiting the certification ‘CE Medical’ which will be an additional guarantee of its relevance in as an actor in the health field. The watch is nominated for the CES 2020 Innovations Awards.
The only question to which I don’t have sufficiently precise answers at the moment is about the cloud providers used by Withings and their location. It would seem interesting to me that they can offer users the possibility of storing their data on their own storage solutions. Case to follow.
Here we have a fine example of a French success story. It is important to follow them and again to encourage them, especially when we decide to equip ourselves with a ‘wearable’ intended for Health / Well-being use, a French solution seems relevant to me.
