 PowerFleet vehicle management system |
Wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions provider ID Systems Inc has received another patent and reports a 22% increase in sales for the second quarter ended 30 June.
US patent number 8,762,009 involves an automatic method of sensing, recording and reporting vehicle impacts. The technology is applicable to each of ID Systems' three business segments dealing with vehicle management systems (VMS) for industrial forklift trucks, rental fleet management systems and transportation asset management systems for trailers and containers.
"We believe this patent gives our solutions a significant advantage over our competitors and will help ID Systems extend its market leadership," says Kenneth Ehrman, chairman and chief executive officer of the Woodcliff Lake-based company. "In the VMS market, reducing the risks and costs of industrial truck accidents is often a key factor in our customers' return on investment, and we include impact management as a standard feature in our VMS implementations."
ID Systems has more than 75 patents issued and pending related to its wireless M2M asset management systems.
The quarterly financial results show a loss of USD1.7 million on sales of USD11.4 million versus a loss of USD1.7 million on sales of USD9.4 million for the comparable 2013 period. ID Systems attributes the increase in quarterly sales to its VMS business, which grew 41% year over year.
ID Systems had 2013 sales of USD39.9 million of which Wal-Mart Stores Inc of Bentonville, Arkansas accounted for 18% and Raymond Corp of Greene, New York was responsible for 10%.
"(In product development,) the basic version of our fourth-generation VMS hardware has completed beta testing, the Wi-Fi version is in beta now and various sensor options will be in beta shortly", Ehrman says. "We expect that this product will reduce our costs, enhance the functionality of our VMS solution, provide a seamless, scalable hardware platform and take as little as an hour to install - about 75% faster than our previous generation of hardware." Commercial shipments are planned during the fourth quarter.
ID Systems outsources hardware manufacturing operations to contract manufacturers such as Singapore-based Flextronics International Ltd.
ID Systems says competitors in its VMS business include entrepreneurial operations such as Pharos Capital Group LLC's tracking technology firm TotalTrax Inc of Newport, Delaware and global telemetry solutions provider Speedshield Technologies P/L of Clayton, Victoria, Australia, and other "companies with longer operating histories" such as Crown Equipment Corp of New Bremen, Ohio.