22nd September 2010 – Swindon, UK – Ubiquisys, the leading developer of 3G femtocells, today announced it has completed the second close of the funding round first announced in July, with a $5 million investment led by three Taiwanese companies: SerComm Corporation, UMC Capital Corporation and Pacific Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Advent Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Atlas Venture. Building on the company’s flagship deployment with SoftBank Mobile in Japan, the capital will be used to accelerate its momentum worldwide, particularly in the Americas.
The investment reflects the growing importance of the Ubiquisys “Femto-Engine” business model, which frees operators and device manufacturers to fast-track their own femtocell designs. Ubiquisys already has strategic relationships with a number of Asian device manufacturers, who have been instrumental in producing femtocells at the sub-$100 price point that enables operators to supply them for free.
Ubiquisys has been well-placed to answer the number one concern among operators; interference problems between femto and macrocells. The company’s adaptive Radio Resource Management (aRRM) is the only system proven to eliminate interference problems in shared spectrum deployments.
The company was also recently named the number one femtocell vendor in an independent study by ABI Research, ahead of vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and Cisco. The announcement reflects a highly successful year which has seen Ubiquisys achieve mass deployments in Japan and France, as well as exploiting its extensive IPR to develop the full range of small cells: residential, enterprise, rural and metro.
“Asia plays a leading role in the femtocell industry today, both in terms of product diversity and business model innovation,” said Chris Gilbert, CEO Ubiquisys. “Our work with SoftBank and SerComm has broken new ground and we are delighted to be adding strategic investors who bring extra know-how to help Ubiquisys build on our strong international momentum.”
About Ubiquisys
Ubiquisys is ranked the #1 femtocell vendor by ABI Research Inc, with mass-market commercial deployments including SFR in France and SoftBank Mobile in Japan. The Ubiquisys difference is intelligence: femtocells that continuously listen to their surroundings, making invisible decisions about configuration, application triggers and media interaction. This has led to a unique range of residential femtocells, self-organising femto networks for enterprise, plus rural and metro outdoor femtocells. Its Femto-Engine software system creates a complete ready-to-deploy 3G femtocell, providing encapsulated deployment expertise off-the-shelf.
Ubiquisys Hardware
Blueprints enable manufacturers to rapidly produce low-cost femtocell devices customised to Mobile Operator specifications. Ubiquisys investors include Accel Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, 5 Continents Consulting Group and Yasuda Enterprise Development Co. (www.ubiquisys.com)
About SerComm Corporation
SerComm Corporation is a worldwide leading manufacturer of broadband and wireless networking equipments. Founded in 1992, SerComm has been focusing in developing embedded solutions to make networking simple and affordable.
With fully integrated engineering capability and state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, SerComm has been able to provide the best time-to-market solutions to the customers, and managed to grow exponentially
in the past decade.
Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, SerComm’s global operation network covers markets of North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, and its customer base includes the world’s top OEMs, telecommunication vendors, service providers and system integrators. Listed on Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE: 5388), SerComm posted sales revenue of NT$7.09 billion in 2009 (approximately US$221.5 MN).
About UMC Capital Corporation
UMC Capital, 100% owned and funded by United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE:UMC), is dedicated to forming value added investor syndication to complement management teams. Its goals are to evaluate investments to supplement UMC Group’s core business, to seek investment opportunities for companies with unique technologies, applications or business models with high potential to become sector leaders and to search for opportunities and growing with portfolio companies to dominate in the industry selected. By mobilizing the resources of UMC Group and its affiliates, UMC Capital is capable of enhancing the core business value of its portfolio companies.
With its team members in 4 offices worldwide (Taipei, HsinChu, Shanghai and Silicon Valley), UMC Capital has extensive history of investing in private equity and venture capital investments. It is an active investor with UMC Group resources to add value for its portfolio companies.
About Pacific Venture Partners
Founded in 1990, Pacific Venture Partners (PVP) is a leading venture capital firm committed to building profitable technology ventures that enable exciting advancements in computing, communications and consumer end-market applications. With three offices across the Pacific Rim region, PVP has the ability and reach to help bridge local companies developing cutting-edge technologies with pan-Asian markets and cost-competitive resources. With over $800 million in capital under management, PVP has invested in over 160 high technology companies in the US and Asia. Over half of these companies have completed a successful public offering or strategic sale.
About Advent Venture Partners
Advent Venture Partners is one of Europe’s most established venture and growth capital firms, investing in world-class technology and life sciences businesses. We seek out remarkable companies that want a pragmatic and well-connected partner by their side. We are dedicated to executing a risk-balanced investment strategy delivering consistent returns for our investors. Advent’s technology team backs leading European technology-driven growth businesses in Internet, digital media, software and services, telecoms and cleantech. Our investments include: Zong, a leading mobile payments solutions provider; Qype, Europe’s largest local search and review site; The Foundry, a buyout of the Academy Award winning global visual effects software vendor for the post-production industry; and, Farfetch.com, an online fashion marketplace for independent fashion boutiques. www.adventventures.com
About Atlas Venture
Atlas Venture is a leading early-stage international venture capital firm that invests in technology and life sciences businesses. Since inception in 1980, its partners have helped build over 350 companies in more than 16 different countries. Atlas Venture is currently investing from its eighth fund which closed in late 2008. For more information, visit www.atlasventure.com.
About Accel Partners
Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of excellence and innovation in venture capital, and is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, California, London, UK, New Delhi and Bangalore, India as well as in China via the IDG-Accel Partnership.
With over $6 billion under management, Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their categories, including Actuate, AdMob, Agile Software, Arrowpoint, BBN, Brightcove, ComScore, Facebook, Foundry Networks, Gameforge, Groupon, Infinera, Interwoven, JBoss, Macromedia, Maven Networks, metroPCS, Polycom/PictureTel, Portal Software, QlikTech, Rapt, Real Networks, Redback Networks, Riverbed, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, Webroot, Wily Technology, XenSource and Zimbra. For more information, please visit the Accel Partners web site at www.accel.com, or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/accel.
