JVCKenwood, un des plus grands manufacturiers de radios bidirectionnelles (en anglais, two-way radio), a récemment effectué un investissement de $10M USD dans Sonim, un frabriquant d’appareils cellulaire ultra-robustes. Sonim vend des appareils utilisant la technologie Push-to-Talk Over Cellular (PoC) pour les travailleurs mobiles (industrie pétrolière, construction, premiers répondants, etc.).
Cette nouvelle apporte beaucoup de crédibilité à la thèse d’investissement voulant qu’un cycle de remplacement majeur des radios bidirectionnelles vers les appareils PoC s’effectue présentement, alors que JVCKenwood prend une position dans ce segment en émergence.
JVCKENWOOD Makes Strategic Investment in Broadband Technology
Voici les commentaires de l’analyste chez Paradigm qui couvre Siyata Mobile, Daniel Kim:
Competitor news – positive inference for Siyata:
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JVCKenwood is one of the leaders in land mobile radio (LMR) – this is the technology Siyata is displacing
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Sonim is one of the rugged device leaders (and like Siyata is a Kodiak partner providing push-to-talk-over-cellular (PoC))
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JVCKenwood announced it invested US$10M in Sonim for a “less than 10%” equity stake and a board seat (attached below). JVCKenwood’s motivation – to accelerate the development of LMR-to-LTE interoperability.
JVCKenwood clearly sees the writing on wall for its core LMR business i.e. push-to-talk-over-cellular (PoC) is coming and taking over. This was a very strategic move by JVCKenwood to hedge its bets. Recall Kodiak is the world’s leading PoC vendor with key partnerships with 5 handset vendors, each addressing specific verticals: Apple, Kyocera, Samsung, Sonim, and Siyata (https://kodiakptt.com/partners-and-ecosystem/handset-vendors.html). The partnership with Siyata targets professional fleets – trucks, buses, emergency vehicles and government fleets.
With the successful closing of its private placement ($5.1M @$0.40), the company has $5.0M in net cash and $9M in working capital. As the company was working capital constrained, funds will be used to accelerate deliveries to customers. Some of which will hit the very last weeks of Q1, but more so beginning in Q2.