Prims Holdings today announced a licensing and cooperation agreement with SchlumbergerSema, a giant New York-listed company.
The deal will see SchlumbergerSema manufacture cellphone SIM-cards incorporating mobile commerce software developed by Prism, with a royalty payable for each SIM made. Although Prism says it cannot comment on the exact royalty payment, it expects to earn R40 million from the first batch manufactured, and possibly much more in future.
"We are expecting a couple of orders per year," says the company`s marketing director Steven Sidley. "Schlumberger is signing up operators all the time and we are optimistic that this thing can multiply over the years."
The licensing agreement carries a limited exclusivity, he says, and at least two more global players are in discussions with Prism to do similar deals.
"It is carefully designed to be exclusive to a certain set of customers and a certain type of silicon," Sidley says, declining to provide more information, although a geographical limitation is thought to be in place. He says a similar deal could be concluded by the end of February.
The agreement was initiated by Smart Communications, a cellular operator in the Philippines which sources SIM-cards from Prism.
"They wanted a second supplier of SIMs and put Schlumberger in contact with us," says Sidley. "They spent months getting familiar with the technology and decided that they could not easily replicate it."
The first order of SchlumbergerSema SIMs using the Prism software is to go to Smart Communications.
In addition to the licensing deal, Prism says it will in future work with SchlumbergerSema in research and development.
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