The RAK Origin Story and the Future of IoT
Every year, the always-connected world of IoT technology grows more pervasive. It’s in our cities, our hospitals, our workplaces, and now even in our homes. According to Cisco Systems, IoT was born between the years 2008 and 2009. This makes it just over a decade old in 2021. And in 2014, the year our CEO Ken Yu founded RAKwireless, the industry was still in its relative infancy.
Ken Yu first encountered IoT while working at a leading WiFi and chip vendor called Qualcomm Atheros. During his career there, which lasted over 10 years, Ken fell in love with the possibilities of WiFi connectivity and its potential to improve people’s lives. As customers began to express interest in connecting devices not usually included in IoT, the gap in the market became increasingly clear. Ken made it his mission to democratize IoT and RAKwireless was born.
The brand bears a straightforward tagline: IoT Made Easy. This mission is our sole focus at RAK. If IoT is the future, our role in that future is to simplify it and bring its advantages within reach for everyone. From products to pricing, accessibility takes top priority in everything we develop. We seek to remove the barriers of entry into this world of technology in different ways—user-friendly product designs and agile remote solutions, as well as responsive, in-depth customer support.
Today, we’ve proudly supplied IoT technology to smart household brands like Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Many of our products are also developed with LoRaWAN® support in mind, in order to make connectivity as wide and convenient as possible for customers. On top of that, we’ve created connections with like-minded brand partners—Helium of The People’s Network, Yalantis, and ParleyLabs, among others—who have helped us develop solutions we believe in, widened our reach, and served as gateways to previously untapped markets. (You can view more of our partners here.) And most importantly, our community of engaged customers, who we refer to as RAKstars, continues to expand, with tech newbies and seasoned developers coming together to learn more about IoT through RAK and each other.
While IoT still remains fairly niche, more and more people are beginning to recognize its benefits for both life and work. Smart home products are becoming ubiquitous. Smart technology has sprung into not just smart devices, but smart cities, smart industries, smart everything. IoT isn’t meant to remain niche—we believe this technology belongs to everyday consumers and large-scale industries alike.
The future we strive for at RAK is one where society and smart technology operate side by side. We seek to make IoT an integral part of the infrastructures and systems that govern our daily lives. Be it transportation or healthcare, IoT’s applications are varied and vast. With this level of connectivity, we can bridge individuals and communities worldwide, foster collaboration, and forge stronger and wider connections.