Sierra Wireless, a leader in wireless solutions for mobile computing and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications, has announced that the company would provide its support for the Wavefront Wireless Commercialization Centre (WWCC).

The Government of Canada has chosen WWCC as one of the grantees of the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) 2010 competition. The WWCC has received $11.6 million in federal funding to drive the growth of Canadian wireless companies, improve their global competitiveness and productivity, create high value technology and business jobs, and improve the quality of life for Canadians.

Sierra Wireless (News - Alert) will provide financial and technical support to WWCC for the launch of industry-leading M2M Development Lab and Market Development Program to enable Canadian universities, emerging start-ups, and solution providers to rapidly prototype and commercialize new M2M applications.  

In a press release, Jason Cohenour, president and chief executive officer of Sierra Wireless, said, “We are proud to support Wavefront in building world-class commercialization capability in wireless M2M, and we commend the government of Canada for embracing the wireless industry as part of its Digital Economic Strategy. We believe the capabilities to succeed in M2M -- from sophisticated wireless devices to advanced applications and complex systems integration -- are a good fit with the knowledge and experience in the Canadian wireless industry and there is an opportunity to build a strong market position for Canada.”

Wireless M2M communications is a rapidly growing market, as an increasing number of applications are using integrated wireless communications capabilities. These include smart meters that monitor and communicate power usage to utilities and consumers; connected cars that offer emergency calling and internet connections for safety, convenience, and entertainment; industrial equipment with remote monitoring capabilities; wireless handheld payment processing machines; and innovative connected consumer devices like e-book readers, wireless health monitoring devices and personal navigation devices. According to estimated from ABI Research (News - Alert), worldwide cellular M2M connections will continue to grow at a rate of 26 percent per year through 2015, to a total of more than 297 million connected devices.

Recently, Sierra Wireless announced the company's participation in the Barclays Capital 2010 Global Technology (News - Alert) Conference.

Sujata Garud is a TMCnet freelancer with three years of writing/editing experience and two years of market research experience. As an editor she has covered the IT, electronics, banking, pharma, construction, mining and healthcare industries. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf