Sierra Wireless is gaining a foothold in the Korean machine-to-machine market, with the recently announced acquisition of AnyData Corp.’s M2M assets.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is expected to close by the end of this month. AnyData’s M2M embedded module and modem business will become part of the Sierra Wireless OEM Solutions line, and 16 sales and engineering staff from AnyData’s Korean subsidiary will join Sierra.
AnyData’s M2M products generated about $10 million in revenue in the past year and is “modestly profitable,” according to Sierra Wireless.
“With significant market share and established sales channels in Korea, and a proven engineering team, we believe that the AnyDATA M2M business represents an important addition to Sierra Wireless,” said Jason Cohenour, Sierra Wireless’ president and CEO. “This acquisition broadens our global reach, enhances our technical capabilities, and expands our market share leadership.”
The acquisition is part of Sierra’s growth strategy for its M2M positioning. Earlier this year, Sierra Wireless sold its AirCard business to NetGear Inc. for $138 million in cash, plus nearly $6 million in assumed liabilities. Sierra kept its embedded wireless modules, intelligent gateways and its M2M cloud product lines and said that it planned to use most of the cash from the sale to make acquisitions to strengthen itself as an M2M and connected device “pure play,” targeting the markets connecting the so-called Internet of Things.
“Sierra Wireless is now an M2M and connected device pure play, focused on providing innovative device-to-cloud solutions that enable customers across a broad range of markets to connect to the ‘Internet of Things’,” said Cohenour at the time of the NetGear transaction. “This transaction provides significant financial capacity to accelerate our growth in M2M – a market in which we are the world leader today, with the industry’s broadest product lineup, and an extensive, blue-chip customer base.”
The company made its first big move into the M2M space in 2008 with its $277 million acquisition of Wavecom, beating out a competing offer from Gemalto.
Since the AirCard sale closed in April, Sierra Wireless’ connectivity products have included an automotive-grade embedded module for Verizon Wireless’ LTE network and Sprint’s first LTE embedded module; one of its modules was also selected to enable LTE connections in a new Toshiba Ultrabook.
In September, the company launched its Sierra Wireless M2M Solution Exchange for pre-packaged M2M solutions for a variety of verticals, which encompassed an initial 28 solutions from 18 partners using Sierra’s gateways for 2G, 3G and LTE networks.
