Frost & Sullivan Confers European Wireless Sensors Competitive Strategy Leadership Award on Coronis

LONDON - The Frost & Sullivan “2008 European Wireless Sensors Competitive Strategy Leadership Award”, is presented to Coronis. The company’s focused strategy of serving the growing wireless utility metering market, thus allowing Coronis to grow its presence in emerging market segments such as home, building, and industrial automation, have placed it on a path of strong revenue expansion.

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“Collaborative technological efforts and a flexible yet resilient structure have helped the company gain a competitive edge and grow at nearly twice the speed as the market for wireless sensors,” notes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Venkatesan Iyengar. “Coronis has been extremely receptive to the changing competitive and technology landscape, its original technology and strategic roadmap has effectively allowed them to evolve and grow leveraging their strengths and capitalise on market opportunities.”

Coronis has built a robust technology platform and product line based on its 2-way wireless connectivity technology. From the very beginning of Coronis, their vision was to one day open their wireless communication platform, Wavenis(R), to the market and create an independent, non-profit organization - the Wavenis Open Standard Alliance (Wavenis-OSA) - that would manage and take the technology to the next level of market growth.

This goal was achieved in June of 2008 and the Wavenis specifications have been transferred to the Wavenis-OSA, which now has the responsibility of developing and promoting the Wavenis technology roadmap. In addition, the Wavenis-OSA will deliver compliance certificates to Wavenis-enabled connectivity platforms implemented by members, to serve sensing solutions in specific growth markets such as industrial monitoring, building automation, healthcare, defense and other future markets.

“The standardisation of Wavenis is expected to offer a truly open initiative of wireless connectivity platform that features robustness, high reliability, ultra-low power and long-range capabilities able to support application profiles and application oriented protocols,” remarks Iyengar. “It will also improve inter-operability with other wired and wireless instrumentation and control systems.”

Although Coronis offers its products to a wide M2M application market, it has remained focused on addressing the requirement of wireless automated meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems for utility meters. The company has steadily built its business in the nascent wireless sensor market; Coronis grew at a compound annual growth rate of 56% during 2005-2007 compared to the market average of 25%.

Coronis’s expertise and the significant numbers of deployed modules in the field for Wireless AMR/AMI led to its acquisition by the Elster Group in 2007. This has provided Coronis with the opportunity to upgrade its AMR/AMI business, while further reinforcing its OEM products to address other markets.

“In a move to strengthen its OEM portfolio, Coronis has joined hands with Essensium to develop the next generation Wavenis System-on-Chip solution,” states Iyengar. “This would reduce the development cost and time for customers and also provide a smaller form-factor to facilitate integration.”

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Competitive Strategy Leadership is presented to the company whose competitive strategy has yielded significant gains in market share during the research period. Often, the recognised company has taken advantage of recent market changes that facilitate the introduction of never-before seen methods of capturing and solidifying market presence. Alternatively, the Award recipient may have executed an innovative strategy within the existing competitive landscape, empowering the company to overtake the competition. In either case, the company captures the attention of the competition, which quickly adjusts in order to protect its own market position. Frost & Sullivan analysts expect such innovations to produce lasting, precedent-setting trends in the industry.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Coronis

Coronis is a leading global designer and developer of ultra-low-power (ULP) and long-range wireless solutions. Based on the Wavenis(R) wireless connectivity platform, the company offers a complete line of products and services for OEMs and system integrators. Coronis products meet the technical, operational and cost requirements of ultra low-powered, long-range track and trace, Wireless Sensor Network, Smart Metering and other M2M applications. The company has been acquired by the Elster Group, the world’s largest metering company and supplier of high quality integrated metering and utilization solutions. Coronis has millions of products deployed in diverse applications worldwide. For more information please visit www.coronis.com.

Coronis is member of the Wavenis Open Standard Alliance. Please visit www.wavenis-osa.org

Coronis Contact Information: Christophe Dugas Geoffrey Riggs Director of Marketing Communications Manager Coronis Coronis Tel. +33-4-67-22-66-70 Tel. +33-4-67-22-66-70 christophe.dugas@coronis.com geoffrey.riggs@coronis.com

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company’s Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO’s Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 31 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit www.frost.com.

Frost & Sullivan Contact Information: Jasmine Malone - Promotions Coordinator Phone: +44-207-915-7869 E-Mail: jasmine.malone@frost.com

Source: Frost & Sullivan

Jasmine Malone, Promotions Coordinator of Frost & Sullivan, +44-207-915-7869, jasmine.malone at frost.com; or Christophe Dugas, Director of Marketing, christophe.dugas at coronis.com, or Geoffrey Riggs, Communications Manager, geoffrey.riggs at coronis.com, both of Coronis, +33-4-67-22-66-70; Logo: https://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081117/FSLOGO