Regulatory News:
The Wavecom Group (Paris:AVM) (NASDAQ:WVCM) today announced the creation of two new executive positions to bolster worldwide sales in the automotive sector by adding experienced executives to its global sales team. This re–enforced team will focus on the critical automotive market.
The first new position, Vice President, Automotive Business, has worldwide responsibility for serving and expanding Wavecom´s relationship with automotive customers, including Tier I and aftermarket players. The second position is Technical Director, Automotive Projects, which is responsible for technical solutions development with automotive customers, and reports to the Vice President, Automotive Business.
These two new positions represent the core of the automotive team that will address this increasingly important market for Wavecom. Establishing a team focused specifically on the automotive business was prompted by the progress of eCall, the European initiative that is promoting cooperation between industry and emergency service providers to establish a pan–European interoperable in–vehicle emergency call service (eCall) for all new car models sold in Europe. The European Commission is expecting a rollout of eCall by September 2010 while the development lifecycle may be longer. Many European car makers see this as an opportunity to pursue other value–added services in the future like assistance, stolen vehicle tracking and fleet management and are already adding telematics to new car models. The automotive industry in Europe represents nearly 35% of all passenger cars worldwide, so the eCall initiative alone represents a potential total available market of more than 17 million passenger cars per annum*.
Taking on the role as Vice President, Automotive Business is Herbert Scheitler, a 23–year veteran of Siemens. Mr. Scheitler most recently worked in Siemens´ Wireless Modules Division responsible for Industrial Business Development (Automotive). Before that, he was worldwide Sales Director for the consumer business with particular focus on the APAC and North American regions. "I am delighted to join Wavecom and look forward to continuing to build its already strong position in the telematics market. With a global mandate we expect to be able to benefit from cross–development among all three geographies to provide flawless customer service with an even more innovative automotive product portfolio," said Mr. Scheitler. He will be headquartered in Wavecom´s Munich office.
The new post of Technical Director, Automotive Projects, will be filled by Andreas Kohn, who joins Wavecom from Cinterion (formerly Siemens Wireless Modules). He brings with him 10 years´ industry experience including eight years at Siemens where he was most recently Director of Product and Portfolio Management - Automotive segment. As a graduate of the Siemens´ Management training program, he held a variety of positions including Product Manager - Automotive, Quality Engineer, Sales Manager and Software Team Leader. Mr. Kohn will also be located in Wavecom´s Munich office.
Wavecom - the wireless M2M experts
Wavecom is a leading provider of embedded wireless technology for M2M (machine–to–machine) communication. We provide a range of GSM/GPRS, CDMA, EDGE and 3G Wireless CPUs; programmable processors which also act as wireless modules or wireless modems. These are backed by a C and Lua–based cellular wireless software suite which includes a real–time operating system (RTOS), a software development environment based on Eclipse TM, and several Plug–Ins (GPS, TCP/IP, security, Bluetooth TM, Lua script and more). We also offer a wide range of professional and operated services. Our solutions are used for automotive telematics, smart metering, fleet management, GSM/GPS/satellite tracking, wireless alarms, wireless POS (point of sales), WLL (fixed voice), remote monitoring and many other M2M applications.
Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Issy–les–Moulineaux (France) near Paris, Wavecom has subsidiaries in Hong Kong (PRC), Research Triangle Park, NC (USA), Farnborough (UK), Munich (Germany) and Sao Paolo (Brazil). Wavecom is publicly traded on NYSE Euronext Paris (Eurolist) in France and on the NASDAQ (WVCM) exchange in the U.S.
* Source: ACEA Association of European Automotive Manufacturers 2007.
