All assets, intellectual property, and contracts will be owned by UnaBiz…
Effective this month, Singapore-based IoT service provider UnaBiz has announced that all of the Sigfox assets, intellectual property, and contracts will be owned by its French companies UnaBiz SAS and UnaBiz Networks AS. UnaBiz also said they will no longer use the Sigfox name.
“Sigfox will remain a technology name just like Bluetooth, Lora or Wifi,” said UnaBiz co-founder and leader Henri Bong, in a post on LinkedIn. “This is the result of a long, 2-month brainstorming with all stakeholders and we conclude this is the best way to move forward.”
In April, Location Business News reported that a French court appointed UnaBiz as the new owner of Sigfox, which had been in receivership and rehabilitation proceedings following massive net losses and debt.
Sigfox, once seen as a major IoT player, had its financial woes chronicled by Techcrunch and French Tech Journal. Sigfox posted a net loss of nearly $102 million on revenues of more than $27 million, with $132.8 million in debt, in its annual financial statement.
According to published reports, Sigfox’s U.S. network operation, “the only other company-owned property when the business went into receivership in France in January, filed for bankruptcy in a Delaware court in March, owing $150 million in unsecured debt.”
UniBiz also said it was committed to keeping the 110 remaining employees and its 16 workers from a Sigfox France subsidiary.
Sigfox was placed under a court’s protection from its creditors for six months. However, the company asked a Toulouse court to shorten this period to only three weeks. After that period ended, speculation whether Sigfox would have a new buyer or would just completely go out of business became a daily thought in the industry.
UnaBiz has a robust asset tracking background, particularly in niche markets. One of these is in tracking beer kegs, a market where the company says 12 percent go missing each year. UnaBiz has supplied Konvoy Kegs’ 120,000-unit fleet in Australia and New Zealand with its IoT tracking solution, Kegfox beacons.
