As fierce competition plays out in the wireless market, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) is looking to grow its IoT business in order to increase revenues. The focus will be on connected devices and smart cities. Already, revenue growth from the IoT segment has shown promise as sales rose by over 60% in the fourth quarter of 2016.

“The Internet of Things including telematics is an area of opportunity that is rapidly growing as the connected world expands. Ubiquitous and reliable coverage to support the vast number of devices that of these various platforms is a competitive advantage,” said the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Verizon, Matt Ellis.

Acquisitions and partnerships

To make its vision a reality, Verizon has already made some acquisitions in this space. With regards to smart cities, the largest telecommunications operator in the United States acquired LQD Wi-Fi and Sensity. LQD Wi-Fi specializes in IoT technology and also providing to small business owners IoT fast track offerings. On the telematics front, it bought Telogis and Fleetmatics, a fleet management firm.

Earlier in the year, Verizon teamed up with QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) with a view to gaining a larger foothold in the IoT platforms space. The partnership entails introducing ThingSpace-ready modules. Verizon will also make a development kit that will assist in creating IoT solutions on the ThingSpace platform available to the public. The choice of Qualcomm as a partner was driven by the fact that the chipmaker is among the leading designers of low-power cellular networking hardware that are to be found in a majority of IoT devices.

Faster IoT application development

The early part of the year also saw Verizon enter into a partnership with Cypress Semiconductor. This was with a view to incorporating the Cypress development platform with the ThingSpace software development kit of Verizon. The announcement was made during the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. This integration would be a plus for developers as it would allow them to bring applications to the market much faster as it would free them from the need to acquaint themselves with complex wireless technologies.

In Tuesday’s trading, Verizon Communications Inc fell by 4.39 percent to close the day at $50.12 a share.