CSR Plc (CSR), a pioneer of Bluetooth technology, is on a round-the-world shopping trip, looking for small companies that can boost its prowess in mapping, voice recognition and other areas

October 15, 2013 Leave a comment

CSR Chief Scours Globe for Startups in Connected-Devices Push

CSR Plc (CSR), a pioneer of Bluetooth technology, is on a round-the-world shopping trip, looking for small companies that can boost its prowess in mapping, voice recognition and other areas. “We have a small team that’s going literally around the world, here in Israel, in Silicon Valley, in Asia, looking for these types of interesting, usually young technology companies,” Chief Executive Officer Joep van Beurden said yesterday in Tel Aviv.CSR, based in Cambridge, England, is seeking to profit from the rise in consumer demand for connected devices and the launch of additional satellite positioning systems, which the company supports. It’s focusing on so-called bolt-on acquisitions in a range of technologies that could immediately fit CSR’s needs, van Beurden said.

“In imaging, for instance something in 3-D sensing could potentially make sense, or something in voice recognition,” van Beurden said. Map-sensor software makers could also be of interest, he said. “It’s a very target-rich environment.”

CSR is also working on location technology to use indoors in spaces like shopping malls, airports and hospitals, where there aren’t satellite signals, he said.

“You need to use dead-reckoning algorithms, Wi-Fi beacons, potentially Bluetooth beacons, to find your way and navigate,” van Beurden said, adding that CSR has a demonstration version of the technology now and is talking to potential partners for it. “We’re spending a lot of time and efforts in this” as being the first company to offer it would be a “game changer.”

CSR has seen its share price more than double since selling its wireless unit to Samsung Electronics Co. last year for $310 million in cash, giving it a market value of 857.5 million pounds ($1.4 billion). Samsung purchased a 5 percent stake in CSR as well at the time of the deal. The company’s offerings have a broad range of applications in smartphones, as well as in cars and personal navigation devices.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sam Chambers in London at schambers7@bloomberg.net; David Wainer in Tel Aviv at dwainer3@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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