The IT Nerd

On Sunday, I read an article where Tile claimed that they were doing well against AirTags. And that their business is doing well. Well, 24 hours later, the news is out that Tile is selling itself to Life360 for $205 million. To put that in perspective, Apple has $1.2 billion in revenues a day. So read into that what you will.

Here’s why Life360 bought Tile:

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.

In a blog post announcing the Tile acquisition, Life360 CEO and co-founder Chris Hulls says, “The combination of Life360 and Tile means safety just got a whole lot simpler for millions of families and individuals around the world. We’ll be bundling Tile devices as part of our Membership plans, and Tile will offer Life360 Membership benefits to its customers. We’ll also start work on integrating our technologies so Tile devices, Jiobit wearables, and Life360 app customers will show up on a unified map – people, pets, and things all in one place.”

So clearly Life360 seriously wants to to up their game in terms of location tracking. And Tile clearly fits into that. But I suspect that Tile users may want to be ready for Life360’s rather craptastic privacy policy. Life360 data harvests and sells your data (including location data). My sense is that this will mean that Tile users will likely defect to other solutions. We’ll have to see how this plays out. In any case, at least Tile has a backer to help it to better complete with Apple’s AirTags.

This entry was posted on November 22, 2021 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Tile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.