Telit

Telit Communications

Type	Public
Industry	Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine communications
Founded	Trieste, Italy (1986)
Headquarters	Headquarters: London, UK Regional Headquarters: EMEA (Trieste, Italy) North America(Raleigh, North Carolina, US) Latin America (Sao Paulo, Brazil) APAC (Seoul, Korea), Italy
Key people	Oozi Cats, CEO Yosi Fait, Deputy CEO Yossi Moscovitz, President Revenue = $294.0M in 2014, $156.3M in H1 2015
Products	Telecommunications
Number of employees	885 as of October 2015
Website	www.telit.com

Telit Communications PLC is a global provider of wireless machine to machine (M2M) technology and value-added services including connectivity cloud and PaaS Application Enablement Services^[1] headquartered in London, UK.^[2] The company is listed on the AIM (AIM: TCM). In Addition to m2mAIR, the company operates two other business units. Telit Automotive Solutions delivering automotive grade products and associated services as a supplier to tier one Automotive OEM manufacturers. Telit GNSS Solutions addresses the market of global positioning receivers and associated technology.

Telit Wireless Solutions

Telit Wireless Solutions (TWS) is a subsidiary of Telit Communications PLC. Telit is a fast-growing wireless M2M company, addressing a worldwide market that amounts to €14 billion already today.^[3] In terms of sales, Telit is ranked as the third-largest M2M module supplier worldwide by market research firm Berg Insight. Since 2005, the company has achieved steadily increasing sales.

Telit Wireless Solutions' headquarters are located in London, with regional headquarters in EMEA (Trieste, Italy), North America (Raleigh, North Carolina), Latin America (São Paulo, Brazil), and APAC (Seoul, Korea). The company has a wide network of sales offices located in Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Germany, France, India, Israel, Italy, Korea, Russia, Spain, the Republic of South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK and the US.

Telit introduced the ball-grid-array (BGA) module, the “Family” and “Unified-Form-Factor” concepts and the smallest GPS receiver module. The company offers an extensive portfolio of cellular, short-range, and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) modules. Its products are available in over 80 countries from 35 sales offices.

History

In 1986, the company started as Telital and Telital Automotive – an engineering company providing research and development services to multinational telecoms. In 1997, the company began manufacturing and marketing products under the Telit brand. Telit launched its first M2M module called Datablock in 1998. From 1997 on, millions of cellular handsets and other mobile communications devices including the first Globalstar satellite phone were to users and operators worldwide.

In 2006, with the acquisition of Bellwave, the APAC (Asia and Pacific) Telit's regional headquarters was opened in Seoul. At the same time, offices in North America were also opened in North Carolina creating Telit North America. Also in 2006 Telit premiered its telit2market magazine, an annual publication covering trends, opinions and market reports on M2M, along with the case studies and technology updates.

In 2008 Telit continued its global expansion with new regional operations, establishing sales offices and manufacturing in São Paulo, Brazil; sales offices in Johannesburg, South Africa and Ankara, Turkey.

In 2009 Telit acquired France-based One RF focused on development of 802.15.4, ZigBee® and proprietary low-power mesh-network modules. The deal included a full portfolio of IPR covering short-range protocol stacks. Telit also launched Infinita Services conceived to simplify M2M solution deployment and maintenance of device software. Launches a new short-range product family and the market’s smallest GSM/GPRS module, the GE865-QUAD.

In March 2011 Telit acquired Motorola Solutions' M2M modules business unit. The acquisition brought Telit’s consolidated pro forma revenues to approximately $180 million for the year ended 31 December 2010. This was equivalent to a pro forma market share of approximately 20% based on report by Beecham Research.^[4]

In January 2012 Telit acquired Navman Wireless OEM Solutions, providers of Jupiter-brand GPS modules, for $3 million in cash. The acquisition gave Telit a dedicated GNNS research and development unit and access to customers outside the M2M module industry.^[5]

In July 2012 Telit formed a new business unit, m2mAIR,^[6] to offer M2M managed and value-added services including connectivity. m2mAIR offers module and subscription lifecycle management via a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and global wireless coverage in partnership with Telefónica. The service was initially available in Europe with roll-outs scheduled in the U.S., APAC and Latin America later in 2013 .^[7]

Later in 2012 Telit launched the Jupiter SL869 multi-constellation GNSS receiver supporting GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and QZSS; quickly followed by the 3D-SiP-based SE880, the market’s smallest and most sensitive full-featured GPS receiver.

In 2013 Telit acquired of CrossBridge Solutions expanding m2mAIR into North America.^[8]

Telit Wireless Solutions Inc., a fully owned subsidiary of Telit Communications Plc, entered on September 4, 2013 into an agreement to purchase US-based (Boca Raton, FL) ILS Technology LLC, a leading provider of a ready-to-use, off-the-shelf, cloud platform to connect enterprise IT systems to m2m-connected devices and machines for business-critical use.

Telit Wireless Solutions Srl, a fully owned subsidiary of Telit Communications Plc, entered on December 22, 2013 into an agreement, subject to closing, with NXP B.V., a fully owned subsidiary of NXP Semiconductors N.V. (Nasdaq: NXPI) to purchase NXP’s ATOP business. The Board is pleased to announce that closing conditions for completion of the acquisition have been fulfilled and closing is expected to occur on March 31, 2014.^[9]

Today, Telit develops, manufactures and markets a wide range of enterprise communication modules including all relevant wireless technologies for M2M applications enabling machines, devices and vehicles to communicate via mobile networks. Telit owns Protocol Stacks for most of its technologies of cellular and short range wireless modules. Its m2m module portfolio include products in GSM/GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, EV-DO, HSPA, LTE and CDMA products as well as short-range modules in Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Short Range RF (proprietary mesh and point-to-point networks for unlicensed frequency bands), Wireless MBus and GPS/GLONASS (Machine-to-Machine) modules. Its xE910 family of wireless modules features a single form factor that is interchangeable on regional cellular networks.

Telit remains the only company to publish an M2M trade magazine telit2market. Released regularly once a year, it is a reference for current developments and new technological advancements in the M2M market.

Research and Development (R&D)

Telit operates eight R&D centers around the globe that are located in Trieste (Italy), Sardinia (Italy), Caen (France)/Leuven (Belgium), Seoul (South Korea), Tel Aviv (Israel), Boca Raton (Florida, USA) Chicago (Illinois, USA) and Foothill Ranch (California, USA).

The R&D facility in Trieste is the company’s main engineering, design & development facility, and headquarters for the global R&D function. Trieste focuses its brain-trust in the advancement of GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and GPS technologies. Telit's Sardinia R&D center is the primary competence center for other wireless technologies and special projects. This facility investigates short-range wireless, satellite, and other emerging technologies. The Center distributed between two R&D facilities of Telit acquired NXP-ATOP, Caen (France) and Leuven (Belgium) houses 30+ engineers dedicated to the research and development effort for the company's Automotive Solutions business unit.

Telit's APAC R&D center in Seoul is the main development site for the company's CDMA, WCDMA, and UMTS projects. It is also Telit's center of competence for automotive specific products and rugged design technologies. The team in Tel Aviv supports the other R&D centers worldwide in the cellular sector. The Boca Raton R&D Center is the world headquarter site for ILS Technology acquired in September 2013 and houses engineering and R&D in charge of advancing cloud technology and the company's application enablement platform (AEP). The Lincolnshire R&D Center is located in the Chicago area, U.S.A. This R&D team is responsible for m2mAIR North America product development including constant improvement to one of the region's most modern Network Operations Centers (NOC) dedicated to m2m. Telit's Foothill Ranch R&D center near Los Angeles is focused on GPS, QZSS, Galileo, Compass and related location-based projects. The company also hosts a Technical Forum, an online knowledge database for the entire M2M community to which all of its R&D resources contribute.

References