David Cleevely, CBE, FREng, is stepping down as chair of Cambridge Wireless (CW) after 15 years in the role since the organisation was founded as Cambridge 3G to drive the emerging mobile industry in the UK.
David will be replaced by Raj Gawera who is vice-president and managing director of Samsung Cambridge and Samsung Aalborg. David will remain as a member of the CW board.
CW is now recognised as an international community for companies involved in the research, development and application of wireless, mobile and internet, semiconductor and software technologies. It has over 400 members from all over the world, ranging from start-ups to global operators, device manufacturers and service providers.
“When we set up Cambridge 3G as a forum for application developers to put Cambridge at the forefront of 3G technology, ambitious as we were, we could not have predicted the network growing into the international group that CW has become,” said David Cleevely. “After 15 years it seems like now is the perfect time to allow another member of the CW board the opportunity to guide the network through the next phase of its expansion. Raj Gawera’s extensive experience heading up marketing and business development teams within the hi-tech sector make him the ideal person to do this. It was important to me that I left a strong foundation for my successor to build upon and I am incredibly proud that I have been able to achieve this. I remain very committed to CW and will continue contributing to its success.”
“I’m both honoured and excited to be appointed in this role and receive the baton from David’s extremely capable hands at a pivotal time for the wireless industry,“ said Raj Gawera. “We stand on the brink of a complete reboot of the whole wireless industry with a maturing and consolidating smartphone-centric market making way for a mix of new core technologies and innovative business models under the IoT banner. This is a shift of seismic proportions creating a myriad of new opportunities for successful disruption.”
However Gawera warns that there will also be many failures: “Not all newcomers to the IoT party will be successful. The winners will be characterised by their ability to navigate the complex ecosystem, master the fast-evolving value chain and read the runes of market timing. This leads to the heart of CW’s value – bringing together the best and brightest technologists, marketers, entrepreneurs and industrialists to share ideas, debate trade-offs and collaborate on designing the future.”
“David has made a huge contribution over many years in helping to steer the development of CW into the leading membership organisation it is today,” said Peter Whale, long term CW board member and Director at Iotic Labs. “On behalf of the board I want to say a big thank you to David for his wisdom, clarity of thought and steady hand on the tiller. Equally, I am delighted to welcome Raj as the new chairman of CW, and I am confident that he has the skills and experiences to ensure we continue to add strong value to a growing membership base of companies creating and deriving value from wireless-enabled solutions.”
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