France-based Inside Secure reported smaller operating losses for 2013, though mainly on an adjusted basis and wrote off $3.6 million in NFC controller chips it had on hand as it continues to exit the market for the chips.
Inside, one of the pioneers in NFC chip technology, which has refocused its strategy onto embedded security, forecasts no new shipments of NFC controller chips to its main customer for the product, BlackBerry. It projects that the handset maker will not order any new NFC chips during the first half of 2014. BlackBerry will use stocks of NFC chips it bought from Inside earlier.
“Given the fact that they are in a weaker (position) vis-à-vis their competition and given the fact they there are significant inventories in the supply chain, we do not believe they will be able to order from us in Q1,” Richard Vacher Detournière, CFO, said during a conference call with analysts Friday. “Also, we took the decision to write down to zero the NFC inventory we have on hand in order to start the year 2014 with a clean sheet, if I may say so.”