Mobileum grows assurance profile with WeDo acquisition

Mobileum has announced it will acquire risk and business management solutions provider WeDo Technologies, bringing together two of the bigger names in this niche segment.

Following the purchase of Evolved Intelligence in October 2018, Mobileum is seemingly on the move to dominant the market. The acquisition of WeDo adds additional weight to its analytics armoury, aiding telcos to detect and prevent fraud on their networks, as well as increasing the physical presence of the firm around the world.

“We are excited to partner with WeDo and support them in the next phase of their growth,” said Bobby Srinivasan, CEO of Mobileum. “As we continue to grow Mobileum, organically and inorganically, the addition of WeDo’s strong product engineering, customer footprint, consulting and services teams to our existing talented workforce around the world will allow us to expand the depth and breadth of our offerings.”

“The combined business offers our customers a richer and more diverse portfolio of solutions in the domains of Revenue Assurance, Fraud Management, Network Security, Roaming and Interconnect. As the mobile industry continues to evolve, this transaction will allow us to continue to invest in the future architecture, assuring the success of our customers along a journey of continuous transformation.”

The newly combined business will have 1,100 employees in 30 offices, serving 700 customers in 180 different countries. The existing WeDo platform and architecture will be maintained, though it will also be integrated with the Mobileum Active Intelligence platform.

Pinning down how big the revenue assurance and risk management software market actually is, however, is not the easiest of tasks.

The Communications Fraud Control Association suggests fraud costs the telecoms industry more than $38 billion a year, with roaming fraud accounting for $10.8 billion of that figure. Estimates from Credence Research suggests the global revenue assurance software market was worth $2.5 billion in 2017, with growth projected at 11% CAGR through to 2026. This sounds promising, however Heavy Reading Analyst James Crawshaw has some doubts.

If we are to assume WeDo is the leading player in the revenue assurance software market, it will have a notable market share. Looking at WeDo’s financials, the team increased orders to more than €60 million for 2018. The numbers aren’t quite adding up here.

Either this is an incredibly fragmented market with thousands of suppliers making up the $2.5 billion, WeDo is not a leading name in the revenue assurance software market or the market is worth considerably less than $2.5 billion.

It is not necessarily the end of the world if the addressable market is smaller than analysts are currently estimating, as long as there is growth potential. There is of course opportunity to grow, though as Crawshaw points out, WeDo’s orders have not really increased significantly over the last few years, suggesting this is somewhat of a stagnant market.