We continue to believe that usage based insurance can be a major growth driver for CalAmp over the longer term particularly as we explore various options to add value beyond hardware devices.
We also believe that we are well positioned to play a larger, more direct role in the market evolution by leveraging our unique combination of hardware, software and service assets as well as our global channels and partnerships.
Moving on to our satellite segment, revenue in the third quarter was $8.6 million which was within the expected range but lower on both a year-over-year and sequential quarter basis. We continue to be pleased with the satellite segment’s operational performance which achieved gross margin of 23.4% in the third quarter reflecting an improvement of nearly 3 percentage points year-over-year and providing solid contribution to our cash flow and profitability.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Rick Vitelle, our Chief Financial Officer, for a closer look at our third quarter financial results.
Rick Vitelle, Chief Financial Officer, CalAmp
Thank you, Michael. I will provide a summary of our gross profit performance, income tax position, working capital management, and cash flow results for the fiscal 2015 third quarter.
Consolidated revenue for the fiscal 2015 third quarter was $63.2 million which was essentially flat compared to the third quarter last year. Consolidated gross profit for the third quarter was $22.1 million, an increase of $1.1 million over the same quarter last year.
The gross profit increase is the result of higher revenue in the Wireless DataCom segment partially offset by the profit impact of lower satellite segment revenues.
Consolidated gross margin was approximately 2 percentage points higher at 35.0% in the latest quarter compared to 33.1% in the third quarter last year.
Looking more closely at gross profit performance by reporting segment, Wireless DataCom gross profit was $20.1 million in the third quarter with a gross margin of 36.8%.
Year-over-year Wireless DataCom gross profit was up by approximately $2 million while gross margin increased slightly.On a sequential quarter basis, Wireless DataCom gross margin in the third quarter was up by almost 1 percentage point compared to the previous quarter primarily due to a favorable product mix.
Our satellite business had a gross profit of $2.0 million in the third quarter with a gross margin of 23.4%.This compares to gross profit of $2.8 million and a gross margin of 20.6% in the third quarter of last year. The year-over-year gross margin improvement in our satellite business is primarily due to a shift in product mix in the latest quarter that reflected a greater proportion of higher margin home networking products.
