Swiss IoT module maker u-blox is to phase out its loss-making cellular IoT business, the firm has said. The division has over 200 employees; jobs are expected to go with its closure. It made revenue of CHF 27 million ($29.6 million) in the first half of 2024, against (adjusted EBIT) losses of more than CHF 15 million ($16.45 million) in the period. The move will eliminate “at least” CHF 30 million ($32.9 million) of annual EBIT losses, it said, as it puts additional focus on its GNSS satellite positioning business, particularly, alongside its short-range IoT connectivity segment.
The latter produces Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules, where profit margins are higher. The analyst community cited slim margins for low-power IoT hardware, stiff price competition from Chinese vendors, and an emerging 5G-based IoT roadmap that will take some years to mature. The company’s gamble to develop its own cellular IoT chipset, to boost margins from cellular IoT module sales, also failed. But ultimately, the fact that u-blox has decided to quit the cellular IoT market altogether, and has not held-out for a sale (or been able to find a buyer), tells the whole story, they said – about the failure of NB-IoT and LTE-M, as much as anything.
“After careful evaluation, u-blox has concluded that phasing out the cellular business is the most viable course of action to ensure the company’s long-term strategic focus and operational efficiency,” said a statement. Stephan Zizala, chief executive at u-blox, commented: “Our efforts to find a viable path forward for the cellular business did not pan out, including exploring a potential sale, leading us to the decision to phase out this business. We will do our utmost to support our employees, customers and partners impacted by this decision.”
The majority of cost reduction actions, slated to be worth CHF 30 million per annum, will happen in 2025, it said. These will be offset by a one-time negative cash hit of about CHF 65 million in the first quarter of 2025 from restructuring, of which around 40 percent is cash, following from a negative non-cash hit of CHF 31 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The business expects revenue of CHF 60-70 million for the full year, and an adjusted EBIT margin loss of 15-25 percent. The company said it will work with stakeholders to minimize disruptions.
Matt Hatton, founding partner at Transforma Insights, reflected: “It has been expected for a while. [Its cellular IoT business] has always lacked the scale of its peers, and the margins of its [own] non-cellular businesses – so the writing was on the wall. What’s surprising is that it hasn’t found a buyer…. There’s obviously not that much interest from its peers to bulk up, or not enough cash to make it interesting for u-blox. [It is] unsurprising that it couldn’t find a company from outside of the space to leap into cellular modules. [But] oh for a Semtech to ride to the rescue.”
Hatton suggested u-blox’s timing appears odd, or just premature, on the grounds European and US IoT module makers should have an easier time of it, momentarily. But maybe its management knows when it is beaten, he said. “This is happening just when we expect non-Chinese vendors to see a significant bump in sales. But the u-blox management will no doubt have taken account of that and concluded it wouldn’t be enough. The revenue and EBIT figures are quite sobering, and it would take quite a dramatic increase in sales to turn things around.”
Jamie Moss, research director at ABI Research, commented: “Its cellular business has faced three challenges: price pressure, customers over-ordering, and a limited customer base. The same issues exist for all cellular IoT module vendors. But smaller vendors, with other lines of business that can’t wait for the cellular market to rebalance, have to make a decision about what to continue to support and what to let go of.” Moss write-out the three points in more detail (see below) – in the context of extreme price competition, post-Covid supply impacts, and a finite sales pool.
Moss raises the point about u-blox gambling on taking chipsets development in-house, as well. He said: “The company made some huge statements in cellular. It developed its own LPWA chipset, to own all of the value from that market by minimising pay-outs to suppliers. But chipset development is expensive, and the cellular IoT market did not take off as hoped – especially with regard to NB-IoT outside China.” He also tips his hat to the firm for punching beyond its weight in the North American LTE-M (Cat-M) market.
There is a sense of tragedy about the whole IoT debacle, he suggests. “It was one of the first cellular module vendors to experience legitimate success with Cat-M, especially in North America, beating out most of its competition in 2022 despite the company’s smaller size. Its cellular products are highly regarded by its customers, and any wind down of its cellular business is in no way due to an uncompetitive or inferior product. For some folks the economics of the market just don’t make sense any more.”
Fredrik Stålbrand, principal analyst at Berg Insight, raises the same point about its gamble on cellular IoT chipsets. “The company has made a couple of strategic bets in the past decade to boost margins in its cellular business, which have not yielded the desired results. As a leading GNSS chipset provider, u-blox believed backward integration (developing its own cellular chipset) would be crucial, given that the chipset makes up a high share of a module’s bill of materials,” he said.
“However, the overall market growth and u-blox’s share within it did not provide the necessary returns on these investments. Although the company scaled back its chipset development efforts last year, its prospects for achieving higher margins appear now increasingly uncertain, which likely explains its exit from the space. The global cellular module industry is becoming a game about scale. With China accounting for more than half of all cellular module shipments worldwide, leading Chinese vendors benefit massively from their dominant home-market positions.”
The result is they can undercut competitors on price in international markets, he said. “This dynamic exerts pressure on Western suppliers, whose minimal presence in China constrains their ability to achieve comparable scale and cost advantages.” In his three-point explanation of its demise, Moss at ABI Research said much the same, as follows; all the quotes below are from him.
1 | The great western cellular IoT conundrum
“The company cellular products are focused on the lower-throughput Cat-1 and LPWA (Cat-M and NB-IoT) markets, which face huge price competition from Chinese vendors, making slim profit margins even slimmer. Cat-1 has been boosted in relevance by Cat-1bis, but has taken a huge hit in value. Cat-1bis modules are half the price of Cat-1 modules – so one needs to sell twice as many just to keep the same turnover, albeit with less profit. Investment in Cat-1bis is a necessary evil to achieve market position in anticipation of eRedCap. But for u-blox the eRedCap opportunity is too far-off to make staying in cellular worthwhile.”
2 | The post-Covid IoT supply-chain hangover
“In the face of the chipset crisis of the last few years, and in the wake of the need to shore-up supply chains post Covid, cellular module customers over-ordered in 2021 and 2022. Those customers are still working their way through their stocks of modules, causing a decline in sales for vendors in the years since – especially during 2024. That initial spike created a dip that we have yet to come out of. For some vendors, which do not have higher value automotive or MBB markets to tide them over, it is not just practicable to wait any longer.”
3) The stark IoT realities of a buyer’s market
“IoT module vendors are largely competing for sales in the same pool of IoT device customers. Most of them owe most of their sales to relatively few customers. In 2023, multi-billion-dollar market leader Quectel’s top five customers accounted for 22 percent of its annual sales. For smaller vendors that percentage is often much higher. A dip in demand, a loss to a competitor, or a loss because a customer has quit the IoT market even temporarily, can cause catastrophic instability and loss of revenue.”
