KORE Wireless Group has snapped up Wyless Group Holdings in an all-cash transaction, creating a combined company with 350 staff and more than 3,000 B2B companies globally, serving six million-plus subscribers. The organisation has become one of the six largest providers of M2M/IoT services globally, inclusive of carriers.
"Both Wyless and KORE have a long history, dating back to 2003, of serving the M2M market from its early beginnings through innovation and strong customer relationships," stated Alex Brisbourne, CEO of KORE.
"We expect our teams to come together to push into new realms of software services for tomorrow's globally connected business environment.
"That's where the real excitement lies. We are creating a true global, technology-rich provider of services for the fastest-growing and most interesting segment of the technology landscape, where data management and telecommunications converge."
The combined business will have a physical presence and data centre operations in Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America.
Brisbourne will continue on in his role as CEO of the combined business and Mike Coffey, current CEO of Wyless, will assume the new position of Chief Operating Officer.
The executive team will comprise of key executives from both companies.
According to Robin Duke-Woolley, CEO at Beecham Research, KORE's acquisition of Wyless has been a while in the making, but is 'hugely significant' now it is here.
"The combined business will have considerably more direct M2M connections than most Mobile Network Operator (MNO) M2M business units worldwide and will be the largest independent M2M network provider worldwide, certainly in terms of revenue," stated Duke-Woolley.
"Both of these companies commenced operations in 2003 as resellers of cellular airtime, in what was then a nascent M2M market. Both companies have also made significant acquisitions along the way. One of these for Wyless was Aspider M2M in the Netherlands and for KORE it was the acquisition of RACO Wireless in November 2014.
"Whereas the acquisition of RACO was almost entirely US-centric, Wyless adds both a European and a Latin American dimension. The overall company is now much more international in its scope.
"This move is significant for several reasons. First up, there are not many MNOs who are generating M2M revenue at this level. It confirms that the independent reseller market has a great future at both the national and international level - something that many predicted would not happen when the MNOs started to focus harder on the M2M market 6 or 7 years ago.
"Indeed, Beecham Research's own data shows that these resellers have in fact been growing at a faster rate than the MNOs over the last few years - both in connection numbers and in revenue terms."