QEOS aims to be billion-dollar company and IoT leader

By Karamjit Singh June 4, 2014

CEO raising further funds, further acquisitions possible
Aims to be leader in IoT market, providing connectivity key

QEOS aims to be billion-dollar company and IoT leader Dr Raymond Chin (pic), chairman of Quantum Electro Opto Systems Sdn Bhd (QEOS) knows a thing or two about networking, having taken the first Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) company to a Nasdaq listing in the mid-1990s.

From those early days of the WLAN sector, today, Chin is excited by what he sees as opportunities in a space known as, the Internet of Things (IoT).

It is a space that both he and, Dr Gabriel Walter, chief executive officer (CEO) of QEOS, see great opportunity in and where they believe the company can become a leading player.

A big step towards taking this dominant position happened recently when QEOS acquired the Intellectual Property (IP) assets and talent of Centric Technologies LLC.

As a result, the optical strength of the company has now been augmented by the wireline and wireless connectivity expertise of Centric and its CEO, Dr Joy Laskar.

Centric is considered to be among the leaders in single chip millimeter-wave (MMW) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) for gigabit wireless solutions. This includes its portfolio of next generation 60GHz 802.11ad Wi-Fi and mobile technologies, as well as integrated gigabit CMOS wireline technologies.

To Chin, when you strip away all the fancy geek words associated with both companies, at its most basic, the underlying core strengths of both companies are their networking strengths.

“The availability of this high speed ubiquitous network along with services is critical for the IoT,” he says.

The services he is referring to is in providing smart video solutions, a new market that QEOS has ventured in to that is forecasted to worth US$42.81 billion by 2018 by research firm MarketsandMarkets.

Specifically, QEOS provides high-speed optical-based Smart Surveillance and Intelligent Security solutions.

But why would a company whose strengths lie in the networking space go downstream into the consumer market? Because that is were the real value lies and, Chin points out, because other technology companies that own a platform have also ventured down this path before.

He highlights Apple with its iTunes service and Microsoft, which built its Microsoft Office suite on top of its Windows platform as examples.

“They are separate products, yet tied together,” he says, in much the same way QEOS now has its networking products and riding on it is its smart video service.

QEOS aims to be billion-dollar company and IoT leader But what really excites both Chin and Walter (pic) is their belief that by combining the two entities (QEOS and Centric), QEOS will enjoy both product and people synergy.

“It is this intersection of new ideas that will flow when you put together people from young entrepreneurial companies.

“They will take ideas and technology in new directions that have not been thought of before that either company, on their own, would not have been able to conceive of,” notes Chin.

That is the greater value that Walter sees as well as he announces his intention to build QEOS into a billion dollar company, either via IPO or trade sale, that is to become one of the leaders in the IoT space.

In the midst of raising further funding, Walter wants the market to know who they are and to fear QEOS too.

“But in a good way, in the sense that we are very serious about building our capabilities in this IoT market,” he declares.

With very high-speed connectivity being the backbone of IoT, Walter believes the acquisition of Centric’s IP and talent puts QEOS in a very strong position to address one of the biggest weaknesses of the IoT, its connectivity bottleneck.

“We have now got a solution for all three connectivity areas and will make further acquisitions when the opportunity arises,” he adds.

QEOS has been generating revenue since 2013 though Walter declined to provide an indication of how much it is making.