News

  This is to announce that Alps Alpine Co., Ltd., (Tokyo 6770, represented by Toshihiro Kuriyama, representative director and president, with its head office in Tokyo, hereinafter referred to as “Alps Alpine”) entered into a partnership agreement with Sigfox SA (with its head office in Labège, France, represented by Ludovic le Moan, CEO, hereinafter referred to as “Sigfox”) on July 28.

  On July 28, Alps Alpine entered into a partnership agreement with Sigfox for the purpose of further enhancing development toward the global expansion of the IoT asset tracking solution.

  Sigfox is the world's leading IoT service provider and first global 0G network operator, covering 60 countries. The combination of the 0G network technology developed by Sigfox and the mass-production technology of Alps Alpine will facilitate IoT market expansion and new services creation.

The partnership agreement will enable us to achieve the three objectives stated below.
  - Early access to the technology under development by Sigfox and the development
    of relevant services
  - Joint development of IoT device technology, including energy harvest technology
  - Joint business development

  As a specific effort, we already started joint development of the Sigfox Bubble^*1 beacon, which will make it possible to detect the location of an object with high accuracy, low power consumption and low cost by means of a tag receiving a transmission from a beacon installed in a certain place and transferring it to the Sigfox network. This technology is expected to be widely applied to the management of barrage and palettes.

  With the cooperation of both companies since 2017, our IoT devices for logistics management are incorporated into the asset tracking solution provided to Deutsche Post DHL Group, a leading German logistics company, and have already been used for tracking cage trucks. This solution will likely be applied globally to various logistics sites, and in this situation, both companies need to enhance their cooperation.

  This partnership agreement will enhance the cooperative business scheme between Alps Alpine, which is responsible for supplying components and devices, and Sigfox, which is widely responsible for the development of the IoT infrastructure, including telecommunications and cloud services, whereby we will develop a comprehensive IoT business and will exert efforts to reinforce our business in the EHII (Energy, Healthcare, Industry, and IoT) area toward the achievement of ITC 101.^*2

*1  See https://www.sigfox.com/en/solutions/sigfox-bubble
*2  ITC101: Mid/long-term target of the innovative T-shaped company with 10% consolidated operating income margin and 1 trillion yen in sales