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Itron, Inc, a premier provider of energy and water resource management solutions for nearly 8,000 utilities around the world, has entered into a partnership relation with Panasonic (News - Alert) to design and deliver highly innovative gas smart metering solutions to utilities in Europe.

The demand for gas smart metering solutions for residential applications is expected to grow rapidly in the coming future. Itron, realizing this, has collaborated with a worldwide leader in electronic products, Panasonic, on the development of its next generation smart gas meter.

Itron will leverage Panasonic's ultrasonic sensor technology to enhance its new residential static meters.

Company officials said that it will provide utilities planning for large-scale smart meter deployments in Europe with a solution that offers a highly accurate and reliable communicating metering solution.

"This partnership with Panasonic demonstrates our dedication to expanding our portfolio by offering solutions of the highest quality and of the greatest reliability," said Jean-Paul Piques, Itron marketing director, Energy, EMEA, in a release. "Strong leadership is built through partnerships and engagement with the wider market and we are excited about this new venture with Panasonic to design innovative solutions."

Itron and Panasonic are also working together to integrate key hardware electronics operating on low power radio into Itron's advanced gas data collection solution.

Masanori Iwai, Panasonic global marketing manager, gas meter devices, said, "Working on these projects with Itron has enabled us to leverage our 30 years of expertise in electronic gas metering and high performance radio frequency technology to serve the metering industry of Europe."

In related news, Itron, Inc. announced that it is ranked number one in a number of market position estimates in the latest water meter market analysis report published by IMS Research.