Expanding Global IoT: Expansion Plans from 1NCE and SoftBank

The self-described “Robin Hood of IoT” software and connectivity provider 1NCE keeps quite busy.

Last month, 1NCE – which offers the IoT Lifetime Flat to connect a device for 10 years, at just $10 – launched Freedom to Switch, the company’s future-proofed answer to undue vendor lock-in issues that have plagued the IoT industry. And before that, 1NCE’s expert IoT capabilities were adopted by Pocketalk; in that same piece, I also covered how 1NCE confirmed that SoftBank has exclusive distribution rights in a total of 19 countries.

Now, we’ve got more 1NCE + SoftBank news to discuss:

After 1NCE reached its fifth anniversary – a cause for celebration, given how 1NCE has 15,000 customers with 20 million endpoints around the world – the company officially announced the launch of a dedicated online shop for 10 APAC countries and regions, thus expanding its operations in the region alongside its partner, SoftBank.

While SoftBank has primarily focused on 1NCE’s IoT Lifetime Flat in other countries, it’s now expanding marketing and sales further into APAC in order to boost global rollout for the IoT side of its business. By leveraging its existing APAC locations in concert with 1NCE, SoftBank expects to quadruple its IoT salesforce, given the forthcoming benefits from 1NCE’s new online shop.

In total, the countries and regions served by said shop are Australia, Hong Kong, Macao, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Moreover, further APAC expansion is set to be announced next year.

“IoT is expanding in APAC at a blistering pace, with the IDC projecting spending to hit $435 billion over the next 48 months,” stated Hitoshi Ono, Senior Vice President for APAC at 1NCE. “1NCE and SoftBank are ready to deliver lifetime, affordable IoT that will supercharge digital transformation plans in smart cities, simplify increasingly complex supply chains, and support environmental monitoring essential to disaster mitigation and prevention.”

Customers in APAC can get started with 1NCE at the online shop and access customer support in 25 languages.

More information about 1NCE (including the 1NCE OS for device and cloud integration) can be found here.