No More Sigfox: New Owner UnaBiz Shuts Down Name
All assets, intellectual property, and contracts will be owned by UnaBiz...
Effective this month, Singapore-based IoT service provider UnaBiz has announced that all of the Sigfox assets, intellectual property, and contracts will be owned by its French companies UnaBiz SAS and UnaBiz Networks AS. UnaBiz also said they will no longer use the Sigfox name.
“Sigfox will remain a technology name just like Bluetooth, Lora or Wifi,” said UnaBiz co-founder and leader Henri Bong, in a post on LinkedIn. “This is the result of a long, 2-month brainstorming with all stakeholders and we conclude this is the best way to move forward.”
In April, Location Business News reported that a French court appointed UnaBiz as the new owner of Sigfox, which had been in receivership and rehabilitation proceedings following massive net losses and debt.
Sigfox, once seen as a major IoT player, had its financial woes chronicled by Techcrunch and French Tech Journal. Sigfox posted a net loss of nearly $102 million on revenues of more than $27 million, with $132.8 million in debt, in its annual financial statement.
According to published reports, Sigfox’s U.S. network operation, “the only other company-owned property when the business went into receivership in France in January, filed for bankruptcy in a Delaware court in March, owing $150 million in unsecured debt.”
UniBiz also said it was committed to keeping the 110 remaining employees and its 16 workers from a Sigfox France subsidiary.
Sigfox was placed under a court’s protection from its creditors for six months. However, the company asked a Toulouse court to shorten this period to only three weeks. After that period ended, speculation whether Sigfox would have a new buyer or would just completely go out of business became a daily thought in the industry.
UnaBiz has a robust asset tracking background, particularly in niche markets. One of these is in tracking beer kegs, a market where the company says 12 percent go missing each year. UnaBiz has supplied Konvoy Kegs’ 120,000-unit fleet in Australia and New Zealand with its IoT tracking solution, Kegfox beacons.
TomTom Collaborates With Dutch Ministry
TomTom [TOM2] has announced that it will collaborate with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and five other partners to provide traffic services with safety warnings.
The company, which has been working with the Dutch ministry for three years, is also partnering on the project with ANWB, Be-Mobile, Inrix, Hyundai and Kia.
TomTom's data is combined with that from the national road traffic database, Nationaal Dataportaal Wegverkeer, to provide a better picture of traffic obstacles, slow-moving vehicles and such incidents as road works, road closures and restrictions.
The new features, available to all users of TomTom’s Traffic Services, meet government regulations that basically say in-car alerts won’t distract drivers, the company said. The Netherlands, with its own Safety Priority Services initiative, is like a number of European countries who are expecting continent-wide legislation that requires driver safety notifications.
System Loco Uses Aeris Connectivity for Smart Pallet Tracking
Aeris has announced that System Loco is using its Intelligent IoT Network to support the tracking and management of smart pallets worldwide. System Loco, which makes IoT-enabled hardware and software tracking technology, has hundreds of thousands of smart pallets in operation.
Aeris believes that the emphasis on sustainable packaging will spur the expansion of the smart pallets market. For example, the company cited the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act, which governs the delivery of food and healthcare products.
The Aeris Intelligent IoT Network includes LTE-M, NB-IoT, LTE and 2G/3G coverage from 600 worldwide carriers. IoT sensor data is transmitted to the cloud through the company’s LTE-M network—to make the pallet’s location and transit condition.
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Blackberry Says Radar on AWS Marketplace
BlackBerry [BB] has announced BlackBerry Radar is now available on the AWS Marketplace, a curated digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent vendors. The company says that BlackBerry Radar is the only asset tracking and monitoring solution available in AWS Marketplace.
BlackBerry Radar allows asset monitoring solution for trailers, chassis and containers that provides near real-time information around location, cargo status, motion, mileage, temperature, humidity, and door open/close status through an intuitive on-line dashboard, the company said.
Contact: BlackBerry, (519) 597-7273, mediarelations@BlackBerry.com, www.blackberry.com/radar.
STMicroelectronics Rolls Out Bluetooth SoC
STMicroelectronics has introduced its third-generation Bluetooth System-on-Chip (SoC), enhanced with Bluetooth direction finding technology for location-tracking and real-time positioning applications, the company said. By determining the direction of a BLE\ signal, the Bluetooth 5.3 certified BlueNRG-LPS SoC can estimate movement and location with centimeter accuracy, the company said.
It uses Bluetooth-specified technology including both angle-of-arrival AoA and angle-of-departure (AoD). Indoor navigation applications include geofencing, asset tracking and real-time location finding for tools, assets and goods.
Contact: STMicroelectronics, www.st.com.
Sygic Adds Safety Button to GPS Nav App
Sygic has announced that it is adding an “I am not driving“ button into the Sygic GPS Navigation app to enable its usage on a phone and a car display at the same time. The goal is to increase drivers’ focus and confidence by using advanced Sygic features over standard navigation via a map, the company said.
The new SmartCam icon groups have advanced features that use a phone camera for their operation. They can be active on the phone simultaneously with map navigation running on a car display.
Contact: Sygic, www.sygic.com.
Renesas to Integrate Nestwave’s Location Technology
Nestwave has announced that Renesas will be employing its technology in a new LTE-M/NB-IoT platform that the semiconductor manufacturer will be launching as a result of its licensing agreements with Sequans Communications. Last year, Nestwave announced that its technology was in the Sequans GM02SP module based on the second generation Sequans Monarch 2 LTE-M/NB-IoT chipset.
The new Renesas module, which will sample later this year, is also based on Monarch 2 and will deploy Nestwave’s NestCore IP. Implementing a GNSS receiver in software on the Monarch 2 chip eliminates the need for an external chipset, the company said.
Contact: Ambroise Popper, ambroise@nestwave.com, www.nestwave.com.
BASF Testing IoT Labs’ Technology
IoT Labs, a subsidiary of iQSTEL [IQST], has entered into a MOU with BASF Corp. to field test the company’s IoTSmartTank technology. The testing, which is conducted at a BASF plant, includes IoTSmartTank devices that were installed in October 2021. The tests have led to the development of a third generation of the IoTSmartTank technology, which the company hopes will analyze asset usage and location.
Contact: iQSTEL, 646-740-0907, investors@iqstel.com, www.iqstel.com.
McGuire Haulage Upgrades Fleet With ORBCOMM Telematics
ORBCOMM has announced that Ireland’s McGuire Haulage has upgraded its fleet of haulage vehicles with the company’s truck telematics solution. ORBCOMM’ solutions provide wireless connectivity through its hardware and a unified analytics platform for fleet management and operational efficiency, the company said.
ORBCOMM’s solution delivers GPS fleet tracking and connects to the truck’s CANbus to collect data from the engine, brake systems, fuel tanks and more, providing access to analytics and reporting, the company said.
Contact: Lina Paerez, Orbcomm, (613) 875-1485, paerez.lina@orbcomm.com, www.orbcomm.com.
Motive and Navistar Partner on Future Product Integration
Motive and Navistar have announced a strategic partnership for future product integration that will connect Motive's Automated Operations Platform with Navistar’s OnCommand Connection telematics and Advanced Remote Diagnostics solutions.
Motive users will be able to streamline their fleet operations by accessing important data about their fleet, including easy-to-read fault code descriptions, severity ratings, and recommended parts and services from Navistar’s OnCommand Connection (OCC) platform, the company said. Other features include such native telematics as vehicle location, engine hours, tire pressure, brake and cabin temperatures and lights status.
Contact: Lubor Ptacek, Motive, lubor.ptacek@gomotive.com.
Trucker Tools Will Receive Location Data From OneStepGPS
Trucker Tools has partnered with OneStepGPS to receive real-time location data from One Step’s truck-installed GPS tracking devices into the Trucker Tools’ visibility platform. OneStep’s GPS-based tracking technology, used by more than 12,000 companies, plugs into a truck’s on-board diagnostic port or can be directly wired into its ELD system, the company said.
The Trucker Tools Mobile Driver App, launched in 2013, has been downloaded by more than 2 million truckers, the company said. The app features freight-matching, automated booking, GPS-driven automated tracking and digital document management, the company said.
Media Contact: Gary Frantz, Trucker Tools, (925) 594-1434. gary@gnfcomms.com.
BlueIOT Completes Asset Tracking Testing
BlueIOT has completed a smart factory project for OSRAM Opto Semiconductors in Malaysia. All machines in OSRAM's factories are tied to BlueIOT asset-type tags to show each machine's location in real time, the company said.
BlueIOT's positioning system also assisted a manufacturing giant in Japan, a large semiconductor manufacturer in Singapore and SAIC Motor in China in improving factory personnel management, the company said.
Contact: BlueIOT, www.blueiot.com.
Reveal Mobile Rolls Out New Geofencing Features
Reveal Mobile has announced new features for its geofencing platform, VISIT Local. The platform allows users the ability to create and activate audiences based on the number of times a mobile device has visited a specific location, such as a retailer, restaurant, auto dealership, or other commercial location, the company said.
Contact: Reveal Mobile, https://revealmobile.com.
People
Taoglas has named Olivier Robin as Chief Operating Officer. Robin previously served as the company’s Senior Vice President and General Manager and Vice President of Global Sales.
Dan Paull has been named Nearmap’s General Manager Australia and New Zealand.
UnaBiz, parent company of Sigfox, has named Loïc Barancourt as Chief Commercial Officer and to the company’s Executive Committee.
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