Emteria helps product builders to easily create solutions that are powered by Android, keep these devices secure and manage them remotely.
The company is headquartered in Aachen, Germany, and supports global players like CGS, Electrolux, and SOCAR as well as highly sophisticated niche providers like SIP Car Parks, Pfeiffer Vacuum, and Dreebit. They provide thousands of products with an embedded OS and the infrastructure to realize smart, Android-based embedded solutions.
Interview with Igor Kalkov-Streitz, Founder & Managing Director at Emteria GmbH.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Igor Kalkov-Streitz: Emteria has developed a powerful cloud platform – emteria Device Hub – to configure and build customized versions of the Android operating system (OS) that perfectly fit a wide range of devices and use case requirements. With this solution, products can easily be scaled from the first prototype to thousands of devices without the need to manually manage them. The Device Hub enables in-depth device control and helps to configure and troubleshoot embedded Android devices from everywhere.
In addition, emteria’s cloud OTA infrastructure makes it easy to integrate the latest security fixes and patches of the operating system to keep embedded products safe and secure.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
I.K.S: Just a few days after the official Google release of Android 13, emteria released a brand new version of emteria.OS based on Android 13 for Raspberry Pi 4. Users of Raspberry Pi can now run Android Tiramisu on their devices.
In addition to the upgrade to Android 13, the new release provides important improvements towards secure updates for all Raspberry Pi Android users who rely on emteria.OS.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
I.K.S: Our offerings and products range from individual Android OS customization services to powerful cloud solutions to manage Android device fleets remotely. With our support, our customers can focus on building great products while we take care of everything else.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
I.K.S: The market for dedicated devices and embedded solutions is mature and very fragmented. We see a multitude of device builders globally across numerous applications. These device builders increasingly face new challenges serving their customers. These customers expect the same seamless experience with professional devices as with their consumer devices, including intuitive UI, frequent security updates and simple customization out-of-the-box. Such expectations are difficult to provide through traditionally established product development processes that are still best practices in the market. This is why we help our customers to shorten their time to market and to provide their clients with a superior user experience.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
I.K.S: Android is known for being used in consumer products such as smartphones and tablets, however, it has become popular as a professional operating system for industrial applications. In this new area of application, the operating system must be ported to industry-used hardware and is required to be customized to its environment of use. These use cases include running powerful industrial applications and embedded devices like human-machine interfaces (HMI) and shop floor dashboards in manufacturing facilities.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
I.K.S: Emteria’s combination of automatic CI/CD pipeline for the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and reliable cloud OTA infrastructure makes it easier than ever to create, update and manage embedded Android products. From the basic building blocks of an Android device to the more complicated, advanced OS features, we’ll support our customers with all the ways to customize the Android OS on one unified platform.
There is no need for:
- Setting up the development environment (Linux terminal + at least 400GB free disk space + development tools),
- in-depth technical knowledge (of the AOSP and the hardware),
- and timely manual development tasks to adjust the standard Android source code to fit industry-used hardware.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?
I.K.S: We anticipate that more and more companies and industries will be on the lookout for solutions that can help them to realize powerful industrial applications and embedded devices based on embedded Android. The ability to update those devices will be an important competitive advantage therefore a reliable cloud OTA infrastructure will get even more important.