Mobile Broadband Startup Stoke Records Strong Momentum Ahead of 2011 Goals

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mobile broadband gateway developer Stoke Inc. announced that it is tracking strongly towards its 2011 growth and revenue targets. As of June 15, sales revenues had surpassed the 2010 total; the company anticipates 300% growth year-on-year in this area. Headcount is now at 160% and unit shipments have exceeded 400% of 2010. The late-stage startup enters the second half of the year with a growing customer, partner and distributor base, and new offices in Europe and Asia.

“The changing industry dynamics have created huge interest in our innovative approaches and we are increasingly invited to the table with major industry players. Bookings for the rest of the year are extremely solid and we expect 2011 to be our first full year of profitability.”

“We believe the company is at the point where we are ready to massively grow the business,” said Stoke President and CEO Vikash Varma. “The changing industry dynamics have created huge interest in our innovative approaches and we are increasingly invited to the table with major industry players. Bookings for the rest of the year are extremely solid and we expect 2011 to be our first full year of profitability.”

Supporting its growing customer base and participation in major commercial engagements, Stoke has expanded its global footprint with new branch offices in France and Spain. Adding to its subsidiary entities in the UK and Japan, Stoke most recently opened a new subsidiary in Seoul, South Korea, where veteran Howard Lee joins as Regional Senior Sales Director and Korea Country Manager. Lee’s career spans senior roles in telecoms and networking companies including Cisco, Samsung, Force10 Networks and Riverstone.

Stoke continues to expand its engineering, support and sales resources, attracting talent from major telecom and wireless industry players, and expects to double its employee base by the close of this year.

Matt Murphy, partner at Kleiner Perkins, commented, “Stoke’s market validation and growth rate have been phenomenal. It’s an exciting and explosive time in the evolution of mobile broadband. Stoke’s solution is addressing the key issues that could otherwise impair this tremendous opportunity, namely security, service quality and performance. We are very optimistic about the possibilities ahead of them.”

Advances in LTE and 3G Solutions

The security concerns of new, all-IP LTE networks, combined with sharp growth in LTE wireless services, are challenging the ability of even these cutting-edge networks to perform and scale as expected. With mobile operator sentiment increasingly trending towards the deployment of IPsec encryption within LTE networks, incumbent equipment suppliers are struggling to meet these requirements, resulting in a sizeable opportunity for Stoke, whose products address the throughput, speed, protection and privacy requirements of LTE operators. With more standalone eNodeB secure aggregation gateways shipped than any other vendor, Stoke is in the volume leadership position in this EPC device category.

In addition to commercial LTE deployments, Stoke is also participating in multiple exploratory opportunities, including consolidated multi-vendor LTE lab test being undertaken by BT, announced in February, to explore the potential synergies of mobile and fixed networks sharing the same basic IP architecture.

While the pace of LTE adoption continues to accelerate, mobile operators must still wrestle with stresses on existing 3G networks. Increasingly, they are attempting to meet overwhelming demand for data services by deploying offload, traffic management and optimization solutions in the 3G network that provide flexibility and control while supporting improved network speeds and greater efficiency of throughput.

At the beginning of 2011, Stoke upgraded its Mobile Data Offload (MDO) solution to enable a wider set of applications to be deployed at the edge of the Radio Access Network (RAN) and initiated new commercial relationships in this area. Stoke recently announced a partnership with Zhilabs, a provider of mobile data analytics, to create an integrated mobile data offload and traffic optimization/ intelligence solution. Stoke is also working with innovative content delivery solution provider Verivue on a breakthrough CDN solution that is proven in trials to improve video download times by a factor of four, providing further evidence of the importance of MDO as a key network modernization tool.

In January this year, Stoke received a $17 million Series E funding, with Focus Ventures joining existing investors including Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers and Sequoia Capital, bringing total funding to $92 million.

About Stoke, Inc.

Stoke is the mobile industry’s only transformation platform, delivering future-focused thinking and solutions for 3G mobile broadband and LTE core infrastructures. Stoke enables mobile operators, through the application of Business-Crossover™ thinking, to overcome limitations inherent in legacy approaches and architectures, helping them tackle the new realities of 3G mobile data service delivery today and successfully navigate their transition to 4G services platforms tomorrow. For more information, visit www.stoke.com.