Eagle-i Telematics has been put into administration by its parent company, Eagle-i Holdings.

Following the move into administration, another company wholly owned by Eagle-i Holdings - Asset Outlook - acquired the telematics' company's assets, including its customer records, stock and fixtures and fittings.

The company also secured a new finance agreements and had them accepted by the principle shareholders.

It has already drawn down £175,000.

Asset Outlook has already said it will withdraw from the SME telematics sector and concentrate on delivering and developing its new technology platform, the Open Asset Ecosystem, aimed at large leasing, contract hire and insurance clients.

Chief executive officer Ian Walmsley said there will be further failures in the telematics arena.

“We can see hardware prices falling by 50% over the next year, which is going to challenge the business plans of a lot of telematics companies,” he said.

Warmsley described the “double whammy” Eagle-i had been dealt in the SME market over the past year, with an ever-increasing number of suppliers narrowing margins and the credit crunch resulting in a lack of liquidity.

“It’s one thing having a customer wanting to buy a solution, it’s another thing having access to capital,” he added.

This lack of capital had a devastating effect on Eagle-i’s ability to secure new business with almost 50% of its proposals being declined.

“We believe that many industry difficulties stem from the current absence of technology standards and the lack of inter-operability between different systems.

“These difficulties have been exacerbated by telematics providers seeking to lock customers in to their products and services, using proprietary black boxes and closed applications,” explained Walmsley.

Asset Outlook’s offering, Open Asset Ecosystem, provides an asset management platform that enables organisations to connect, locate and manage all their operational assets, including people, vehicles and equipment, regardless of the origin of the GPS-enabled device.

“Today, we see many large companies running a number of standalone telematics solutions across their divisions,” explained Andrew Hunter, Asset Outlook’s commercial director.

“In some cases the number runs to double figures, but with little or no aggregated value or benefit to the company, only increased costs and supplier risk.

“Asset Outlook’s Open Asset Ecosystem enables a consolidation of these systems to provide a consistent level of data and management reporting across the group.”

Its own research suggests growth of 20% over the next five years in the telematics market serving the leasing and insurance sectors, worth an estimated £6.9 billion.