- Airvana: $83 million (AIRV) IPO and now going private for $530M purchased by 72 Mobile Holdings, S.A.C. Capital and Blackstone Group
- Vanu: $32 million Norwest, Charles River, Tata
- PicoChip: $31 million AT&T, Intel, Highland, Atlas, Samsung
- RadioFrame: $28 million Eastven, Vantage Point, Ignition, Samsung
- Tatara: $26 million Highland, North Bridge
- Ubiquisys: $25 million from Accel, Atlas and Google & T-Ventures
- Kineto: $15.5 million round from Venrock, SutterHill, Oak, Motorola & NEC
- Percello: $12 million Granite, T-Venture, Vertex
- AirWalk: $10 million TL Ventures, Seven Rosen, Nedelco
- ip.access: $10 million Scottish Equity, ADC, Cisco, Qualcomm
For the last two years I have noticed a pattern of frustration from executives at these companies who vent their frustration having to sell their femtocells through the carrier channels. It troubles me that all of these companies continue rely on incompetent marketers (the carriers) to sell their products and educate consumers that they exist. Cannibalization of your customers marketing just might be the only way to get ahead in business. I strongly suggesting that each of these companies will need to "steal a page from the Google Nexus One Phone" and start doing some demand side research of who needs the product and where. Its obvious that the carriers have very little financial incentive to push femtocells to their customers for fear of cannibalizing their existing businesses. Yes I am suggesting that femtocell marketing executives start thinking like Cannibal Lecter in order to make their companies successful. Sometimes cannibalization of your own customers is the only way to succeed and rise about the crowd.
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Interesting list, and a good point. It is bizarre how reluctant carriers are to promote femtocells.
Once AT&T or Voda have made the decision to launch, surely it is in their interests to sell as many as possible and to get the edge on their competitors
A couple of comments though:
some of those companies would never have consumer awareness, because they sell to people who sell to carriers.
picoChip, Percello, Kineto - they'll be as famous (not) as Lantiq, Ikanos or Starent: they are inside the box/ deep in network and it is not just the carrier cannibalisation.
But HAYS SYSTEMS in UK do seem to be following exactly your suggestion - going direct to consumer.
I don't know where you got your funding figures from. Most, if not all, of the companies you have listed have raised more than you have listed.
It's actually very reasonable for any of these carrier to do a slow launch. They're still really experimenting with how to use femtocells and getting all the back office processes sorted out. Vodafone launched before their provisioning systems were in place and AT&T have had issues with the GPS on their femtocells, which they need to get a location to ensure that their customers are not using femtocells in areas where they don't have spectrum.
Femtocells form part of a carrier's radio access network and use licensed spectrum, so there is no way a femtocell manufacturer can sell directly to the consumer without the involvement of the operator. Well, there is, but as in the case of a phone, you would need a contract with a carrier in order to use it.