Life360, the company behind the app by the same name, which allows you to share your locations with friends and family, will acquire Tile in a deal worth $205 million. The deal is expected to close in the first three months of the new year.
This union will be beneficial for both companies. For starters, the 33 million smartphone users that have the Life360 app installed will join Tile’s Finding Network, which is predicted to increase its reach by around 10 times.
Tile trackers rely on Bluetooth, but that has relatively short range and the connection to your phone can quickly be lost. The Finding Network extends the range by relying on other Tile users and their phones to pick up the signal.
Tile’s tracking tech is also integrated into over 50 third-party devices – headphones, dog collars, laptops and others – so this may help you even if you don’t have an actual Tile tracker.
Life360 stands to benefit from this acquisitions as well. In the short term, the paid subscribers of the Tile service will join Life360’s subscriber base and increase it by about 45%, bringing the total to 1.6 million people or so.
Also, Tile products are sold in over 27,000 brick and mortar stores, Life360 will gain access to that retail distribution network for its future projects. This deal complimented by Life360’s recent acquisition of Jiobit, which makes pet and child trackers that rely on the cell networks and GPS.
The two companies are keen to point out that their products are platform-agnostic, meaning that they work on both Android and iOS, which cannot be said (yet) of Apple’s AirTags or Samsung’s SmartTags. This means your family can have a mixture of iPhones and Androids and still use the service.
The current team at Tile will remain the same and under the same leadership – CEO CJ Prober will keep the position while also joining Life360’s Board of Directors.
