Cisco said the planned purchase will likely close in the second quarter of next year. It will be acquisition No. 124 for the networking giant.
For Navini, the exit has been a long time in the making. The company raised its first round, of $15.5 million, in 2000, with backing from
Cisco’s stepped-up WiMAX activity should also spur growth. CIBC analysts Ittai Kidron and Glen Anderson, commenting on Cisco’s latest acquisition, called the deal “a strong endorsement to WiMAX as a technology” and estimated Navini’s annual sales at about $80 million. However, Cisco’s move into the WiMAX arena also raises the competitive bar against established players, including Motorola, Nortel, Nokia, Siemens and Alvarion.
Navini is one of a handful of WiMAX companies that have raised substantial venture funding to date, including new rounds this year. Aperto Networks, a Milpitas, Calif.-based developer of WiMAX base stations, has raised $145 million since 1999, including $21 million in the past year from
And Telsima Corp., in Sunnyvale, Calif., raised $50 million in April from
However, the biggest WiMAX play to date has been network operator Clearwire Corp. (Nasdaq: CLWR), which has a market capitalization of about $3.6 billion nearly eight months after its $600 million IPO. The stock of Clearwire, which was trading at about $21 a share last week, is down sharply from its $35 peak in July. But analysts project that Clearwire’s annual revenue will more than double in 2008 as WiMAX gains traction. ABI Research forecasts that by 2012, just under 300 million people will connect to WiMAX.