At u-blox we are always asking the question: Where should we invest for innovation? This involves a thorough and constant decision-making process that aims to determine the best avenues to invest at the technological level to fuel our growth. Our partnerships with market leaders are essential to this, and to our value creation process.

By turning in-depth market and application understanding into salient solutions featuring innovative functionality, better cost/performance ratios, lower implementation risk, and less time to market, u-blox creates value for customers, shareholders, employees, partners, and communities around the world within which we operate.

It’s no longer just about the hardware
‍A solution is no longer just about the hardware. It is now also about the u-blox value-added service, which improves how the hardware works. Of course, the hardware will work without the service. However, the service decisively enhances functionality.  We generate extraordinary value when we combine the two and create the best solution for our customers.
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What does it take to be a chip to cloud solution provider today?
‍We start with our customers’ problems and our belief that the solution must be very easy to implement, and then identify and deliver on the four main IoT pain points: Position, Connect, Compute and Cloud integration.

The Thingstream.io platform is an industry must-have device enhancing platform
Our comprehensive end-to-end solutions portfolio solves the complexity of IoT implementation based on global industry practice. We reduce the cost of ownership by offering a product with the relevant “as-a-Service” solutions at a reasonable price with on-demand scalability. The u-blox Thingstream.io platform is rapidly establishing itself across the IoT industry as a must-have for enhancing device capabilities while ensuring rapid go-to-market deployment.  

Customer projects with recurring services add 20% to100% of hardware revenue
The u-blox Thingstream.i.o platform has a substantial cumulative effect on u-blox recurring revenue and has proven essential to our value proposition. Our IoT Communication-as-a-Service, IoT Location-as-a-Service, and IoT Security-as-a-Service offerings are all managed over the platform. As a result, they have a robust cumulative effect on revenue. Over the customer project lifetime, recurring service revenue can add 20% to 100% on top of the original hardware revenue.

Thingstream.io drives cumulative revenue as hardware is continuously installed in the field.

“Over the lifetime of a customer project, recurring service revenue can add 20% to 100% on top of the original hardware revenue.”

Focus on fast growth markets driven by persistent megatrends
As the world continues to digitize across most aspects of life, u-blox experiences strong growth drivers within its market areas. Megatrends such as the relentless automation and digitization across all industries, the goal of an autonomous automobile and new forms of mobility, as well as the expansion of wearables due to low power solutions, continue to support our growth favorably.

We continue to gain significant market share by focusing on fast growing markets where we can extract value due to our competitive advantage by combining positioning with connectivity and our service offerings for communication, location, and security.

Delivering when others could not
Additionally, we gained market share during the semiconductor shortage crisis thanks to our product and supply chain diversity. Through our supply chain's resilience, we were able to offer enough products to satisfy the growing needs of our customers. Our business growth strategy allowed us to profit from an enlarged portfolio and the competence to help customers to turn their designs around quickly. Thus, we were well positioned to deliver when others could not, which helped us substantially increase our customer base.

We have invested CHF 1 billion in our core IP
Having invested CHF 1 billion in our core Intellectual Property (IP) over the last 15 years, we have achieved a sustainable competitive advantage and created significant value with increasing margins over the lifetime of our products and solutions.Three quarters of our gross margin is from products with our proprietary chip sets.

“We invested in developing a diversified portfolio and had the competence to help customers turn their designs around quickly. We could, fortunately, deliver when others could not, which helped us increase our customer base dramatically.”

We capitalize R&D during development and harvest revenue over a very long time
Through our strategic and sustained investment in product platforms, we have seen a continuous return on our investment over a decade. We are achieving strong and long-lasting returns on our R&D investment.

More than double the global semiconductor market historical revenue CAGR
With its proprietary chip sets, u-blox is highly competitive within the IoT industry.
Our chip-to-cloud strategy has progressively driven our revenue Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) to more than double the global semiconductor market historical revenue CAGR (from 2007 to 2022). Our innovation, anticipation of, and adaptation to semiconductor market trends, have helped us create value for our stakeholders worldwide.

“Our chip-to-cloud strategy has progressively driven our revenue to more than double the world semiconductor market CAGR over the same period.”

We are the trusted IoT partner in industrial and automotive markets
We have everything in place at u-blox: The team, the attitude, the culture, the processes, our expertise, and our unrivaled technology portfolio to continue to grow and benefit as automation and mobility drive expansion across our markets worldwide.