SMITH MICRO SOFTWARE INC

General

Smith Micro provides software solutions that simplify and enhance the mobile experience to some of the leading wireless service providers around the globe. From enabling the Digital Family Lifestyle™ to providing powerful voice messaging capabilities, we strive to enrich today’s connected lifestyles while creating new opportunities to engage consumers via smartphones and consumer Internet of Things ("IoT") devices. Our portfolio includes family safety software solutions to support families in the digital age and a wide range of products for creating, sharing, and monetizing rich content, such as visual voice messaging, retail content display optimization and performance analytics on any product set.

We continue to innovate and evolve our business to respond to industry trends and maximize opportunities in growing and evolving markets, such as digital lifestyle services and online safety, “Big Data” analytics, automotive telematics, and the consumer IoT marketplace. The key to our longevity, however, is not simply technological innovation, but our focus on understanding our customers’ needs and delivering value.

The Company was incorporated in California in November 1983 and reincorporated in Delaware in June 1995. Our principal executive offices are located at 5800 Corporate Drive, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15237 and our telephone number is (412) 837-5300. Our website address is www.smithmicro.com, and we make our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) available on the Investor Relations page of our website. Information contained on our website does not constitute a part of this Report. Our common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “SMSI.”

Business Segments

We currently have one reportable operating segment: Wireless.

The wireless industry continues to undergo rapid change on all fronts as connected devices, mobile applications, and digital content are consumed by users who want information, high-speed wireless connectivity and entertainment, anytime, anywhere. While most of us think about being “connected” in terms of computers, tablets and smartphones, the consumer IoT market is creating a world where almost anything can be connected to the wireless Internet. Wearable devices such as smartwatches, fitness trackers, pet trackers and GPS locators, as well as smart home devices, are now commonplace, enabling people, pets, and things to be connected to the “Internet of Everything.” These devices have created an entire ecosystem of over-the-top (“OTT”) apps that provide products over the Internet to bypass traditional distribution methods, while expanding how communication service providers can provide value to mobile consumers.

Although there are numerous business opportunities associated with pervasive connectivity, there are also numerous challenges, including:

•The average age by which most children use smartphones and other connected devices continues to decrease. As such, parents and guardians must be proactive in managing and combating digital lifestyle issues such as excessive screen time, cyberbullying, and online safety;

•As IoT use cases continue to proliferate and scale, management complexity, security and interoperability must be addressed efficiently and correctly;

•Mobile network operators (“MNO”) are being marginalized by messaging applications, and face growing competitive pressure from cable multiple system operators (“MSO”) and others deploying Wi-Fi networks to attract mobile users;

•Enterprises face increasing pressure to mobilize workforces, operations, and customer engagement, but lack the expertise and technologies needed to leverage mobile technology securely and cost-effectively;

•The ubiquity and convenience of e-commerce has created the need for consumer-facing brands to reimagine brick-and-mortar retail experiences; and

•The change in dynamics of work, school and home life has led to an increased use of mobile devices for work, education and entertainment which has given rise to a new set of challenges and issues.

To address these challenges, Smith Micro offers the following solutions:

Products

SafePath®– Comprised of SafePath OS™, SafePath Kids™, SafePath Family™, SafePath Global™, SafePath IoT™, SafePath Home™, and SafePath Premium™, the SafePath product suite provides comprehensive and easy-to-use tools to protect family digital lifestyles and manage connected devices both inside and outside the home. As a carrier-grade, white-label platform, SafePath empowers MNO and cable operators to bring to market full-featured, on-brand family safety solutions that provide in-demand services to mobile subscribers. These solutions include location tracking, parental controls, driver safety functionality, and enhanced AI/machine learning to optimize and customize families' online experience, provide cyberbullying protection, social media intelligence, and public safety notifications for parents or guardians. Our SafePath-based solutions have traditionally been delivered to end-users as value-added services, offering new revenue streams for MNOs while helping to increase brand affinity and reduce subscriber churn. In 2024, we launched two new innovations on our SafePath platform. First, we deployed and launched SafePath Global™, a new deployment and launch model that allows MNOs to rapidly deliver SafePath to their users with faster time-to-market, minimal reliance on MNO's resources, and easy customer onboarding. Second, we launched SafePath Kids, a new and innovative implementation of our solution which enables MNOs to offer rate plans for children with built-in protections, not as a value-added service but as an integral component of the MNO offering. In 2025 we plan to deploy SafePath OS, a software solution designed to be pre-installed and configured on mobile devices to enable MNOs to offer kids phones and senior phones with key features and protections of our SafePath family safety solution out of the box.

ViewSpot® – Our retail display management platform provides wireless carriers and retailers with a way to bring powerful on-screen, interactive demos to life. These engaging in-store demo experiences deliver consistent, secure, and targeted content that can be centrally managed and updated via ViewSpot Studio. With the feature set provided by the ViewSpot platform, wireless carriers and other smartphone retailers can easily customize and optimize the content loops displayed on demo devices so that it resonates with in-store shoppers. Interactive demos created in ViewSpot can be experienced on Android smart devices.

CommSuite® – The CommSuite premium messaging platform helps mobile service providers deliver a next-generation voicemail experience to mobile subscribers, while monetizing a legacy cost-center. CommSuite Visual Voicemail (“VVM”) and Premium Visual Voicemail ("PVVM") quickly and easily allows users to manage voice messages just like email or SMS with reply, forwarding and social sharing options. CommSuite also enables multi-language Voice-to-Text (“VTT”) transcription messaging, which facilitates convenient message consumption for users by reading versus listening. The CommSuite platform is available to both postpaid subscribers as well as prepaid subscribers and is installed on millions of Android handsets in the United States.

Marketing and Sales Strategy

Because of our broad product portfolio, deep integration and product development experience and flexible business models we can quickly bring to market innovative solutions that support our customers’ needs, which creates new revenue opportunities and differentiates their products and services from their competitors.

Our marketing and sales strategy is as follows:

Leverage Operator Relationships. We continue to capitalize on our strong relationships with the world’s leading MNOs and MSOs. These customers serve as our primary distribution channel, providing access to hundreds of millions of end-users around the world.

Focus on High-Growth Markets. We continue to focus on providing digital lifestyle solutions, analytics/Big Data solutions, premium messaging services, and visual retail content management solutions.

Expand our Customer Base. In addition to growing our business with current customers, we look to add new MNO and MSO customers worldwide, as well as to expand into new partnerships as we extend the reach of our product platforms within the connected lifestyle ecosystem.

Key Revenue Contributors

In our business, we market and sell our products primarily to large MNOs and MSOs, so there are a limited number of actual and potential customers for our current products, resulting in significant customer concentration. With the launch of SafePath Global, we plan to expand our customer reach more easily to smaller MNOs and MSOs.

One of the Company's U.S. Tier 1 carrier customers terminated its family safety contract with Smith Micro, effective June 30, 2023, and elected to continue to receive services under the contract for a transitional period through November 30, 2023. The revenues associated with that customer contract were approximately 36% of our total revenues for 2023. We did not have any further revenue from this contract in 2024.

Customer Service and Technical Support

We provide technical support and customer service through our online knowledge base, email, and live chat. Our operator customers generally provide their own primary customer support functions and rely on us for support to their technical support personnel.

Product Development

The software industry, particularly the wireless market, is characterized by rapid and frequent changes in technology and user needs. We work closely with industry groups and customers, both current and potential, to help us anticipate changes in technology and determine future customer needs. Software functionality depends upon the capabilities of the related hardware. Accordingly, we maintain engineering relationships with various hardware manufacturers, and we develop our software in tandem with their product development. Our engineering relationships with manufacturers, as well as with our major customers, are central to our product development efforts. We remain focused on the development and expansion of our technology, particularly in the wireless space.

Competition

The markets in which we operate are highly competitive and subject to rapid changes in technology. These conditions create new opportunities for Smith Micro, as well as for our competitors, and we expect new competitors to continue to enter the market. We not only compete with other software vendors for new customer contracts, in an increasingly competitive and fast-moving market we also compete to acquire technology and qualified personnel.

We believe that the principal competitive factors affecting the mobile software market include domain expertise, product features, usability, quality, price, customer service, speed to market and effective sales and marketing efforts. Although we believe that our products currently compete favorably with respect to these factors, there can be no assurance that we can maintain our competitive position against current and potential competitors. We also believe that the market for our software products has been and will continue to be characterized by significant price competition. A material reduction in the price we obtain for our products would negatively affect our profitability.

Many of our existing and potential customers have the resources to develop products internally that would compete directly with our product offerings. As such, these customers may opt to discontinue the purchase of our products in the future. Our future performance is therefore substantially dependent upon the extent to which existing customers elect to purchase software from us rather than designing and developing their own software.

Proprietary Rights and Licenses

We protect our intellectual property through a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, intellectual property laws, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions. We have United States and foreign patents and pending patent applications that relate to various aspects of our products and technology. We have also registered, and applied for the registration of, U.S. and international trademarks, service marks, domain names, and copyrights. We will continue to apply for such protections in the future as we deem necessary to protect our intellectual property. We seek to avoid unauthorized use and disclosure of our proprietary intellectual property by requiring employees and third parties with access to our proprietary information to execute confidentiality agreements with us and by restricting access to our source code.

Our customers license our products and/or access our offerings pursuant to written agreements. Our customer agreements contain restrictions on reverse engineering, duplication, disclosure, and transfer of licensed software, and restrictions on access and use of software as a service ("SaaS").

Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary technology and our intellectual property rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or obtain and use our technology to develop products and technology with the same functionality as our products and technology. Policing unauthorized use of our technology and intellectual property rights is difficult, and we may not be able to detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property rights or take effective steps to enforce our intellectual property rights.

Human Capital Resources

As of December 31, 2024, we had a total of 164 employees within the following departments: 117 in engineering and operations, 31 in sales and marketing, and 16 in management and administration. We are not subject to any collective bargaining agreement, and we believe that our relationships with our employees are good. We believe that our strength and competitive advantage is our people. We value the skills, strengths, and perspectives of our diverse team and foster a participatory workplace that enables people to get involved in making decisions. The Company provides various training and development opportunities to foster an environment in which employees are encouraged to be creative thinkers who are driven, focused, and interested and able to advance their knowledge and skills in ever-changing technology.