Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
Sierra Wireless has announced entering into a definitive agreement to acquire Wireless Maingate for $90 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close in February.
Known for its machine-to-machine devices and cloud services, Sierra Wireless’ 2G, 3G and 4G embedded modules and gateways integrate with secure M2M cloud services. The agreement with Wireless Maingate comes into play as an integral piece of a mission end-to-end solution – the ability to offer and manage the wireless connectivity that pulls it all together.
Wireless Maingate was founded in 1998, and provides M2M connectivity and data management services to more than 1,000 customers throughout Europe. Within the Nordics they boast some impressive statistics in the M2M space with more than 55% of all smart meters in Sweden, 20% of all smart meters in Finland, 7% of the point-of-sale terminals in Sweden and 40% of all residential alarms in Sweden utilizing their services.
Maingate fills the void in Sierra Wireless’ solution; that of managed connectivity. Acting as an MVNO through resale relationships with European MNOs, they can provide a solution that combines a branded SIM, OTA SIM provisioning, connectivity, subscriber management and cloud-based applications. Acting as an MNO in their own right, they have licenses and a core network allowing them to offer their own brand of SIMs. These SIMs can be provisioned remotely over-the-air as required. Focusing on the energy, security and point-of-sale markets they have a recurring revenue stream through these managed services.
Together they become an interesting combination through the ability to offer “device to the cloud” M2M solutions in Europe.
The combined offer seems to be a win-win for everyone involved. Sierra Wireless fills the void in its portfolio, gains a recurring revenue stream and adds $6 million EBITA to its financial standing. Maingate has the opportunity to expand beyond its current geography and vertical segment focus while offering a broader solution set as a part of a larger organization. And most importantly, the customer wins with more choices – they can choose all or part of the solution: bring their own connectivity or have connectivity provided as part of the package.
