Iridium Communications Inc. announced that it has signed agreements with five new value-added partners to market Iridium-based data solutions for the mobile machine-to-machine (M2M) sector. These new partnerships, including the company’s first-ever consumer Iridium short-burst data (SBD) relationships, open up numerous customer opportunities.
“Alliances with well-established world-class partners will spearhead our growth and solidify our market leadership in transportation, industrial, security, consumer and other higher-volume sectors,” says Greg Ewert, executive vice president of global distribution channels for Iridium. “The companies will leverage Iridium’s global low-latency two-way satellite data links and our next-generation Iridium 9602 SBD transceiver to create innovative low-cost M2M solutions for broad-based government, commercial and consumer markets.”
Iridium says the new partners are:
• ACR Electronics, a subsidiary of Cobham that manufactures safety and survival products for marine, aviation and military markets. As an Iridium Value Added Reseller, ACR is extending its range of renowned emergency distress alerting beacons to include global two-way text messaging and tracking capabilities. The company will be offering its TXT-100 device together with a range of airtime contracts through its global distribution network;
• DeLorme, a provider of mapping and GPS solutions for both consumer and professional markets, and creator of the Earthmate GPS receiver. The company’s business and government solutions include a variety of World and North America mapping datasets ─ owned and produced by DeLorme ─ as well as flexible XMap GIS software tools;
• Digi International, a developer of wireless M2M solutions. From satellite to ZigBee, its wireless products are designed to connect devices in telematics, fleet management, industrial, government, Smart Energy and numerous other applications. Digi also offers the iDigi cloud Web-hosted service, which makes it easy to integrate devices into a company’s back-end systems;
• Kore Telematics, a global communications services provider with 100 percent focus in M2M communications, which will partner with Iridium to integrate satellite connectivity into its PrismPro platform, delivering this expanded services capability to its partners across the globe. Iridium says satellite connectivity is a natural complement to Kore’s cellular deliveries that, in partnership with leading worldwide carriers, include both CDMA and GSM technologies. Iridium says Kore now can provide global coverage for applications in supply chain management, logistics, industrial monitoring and multiple other industries; and
• Xact Technology, a solutions provider for the GPS tracking, location-based services (LBS) and M2M industries. Xact says its open architecture platform (hardware, software, data networks and user-interface portals) offers end-to-end solutions in less time and with lower cost.
“With these partnerships, Iridium is aligning itself with best-of-breed companies that are the clear market leaders in remote tracking, monitoring and control applications,” says Patrick Shay, vice president of data services for Iridium. “These are industry-leading M2M companies with the expertise, customer relationships and market clout that will further accelerate market growth for Iridium’s satellite data business.”
