GPS World, May 2011

Industry news and developments GPS Galileo GLONASS BUSINESS THE SURVEY GIS Trimble Enters Agreement to Acquire Ashtech By Eric Gakstatter Survey GIS Contributing Editor I n April Trimble Navigation Ltd announced it was acquiring GNSS surveying receiver manufacturer Ashtech the latest in a string of strategic acquisitions by Trimble However this acquisition is unique in that Ashtech is a GNSS receiver designer manufacturer which is one of Trimbles strengths The agreement encompasses privately held Ashtech S A S headquartered in Carquefou France and its affiliates Look closer and youll see that Trimbles GNSS offering is a dual brand strategy with the premium brand wielding the Trimble name and the entry level brand marketed by Spectra Precision a company that Trimble acquired back in 2000 The Spectra Precision GNSS product line has seen limited success and has struggled with brand awareness In the announcement Trimble stated that the Ashtech brand will be added to the Spectra Precision product line up certainly a boost in brand name recognition for Spectra Precision as the Ashtech name is well established and carries a solid reputation It hasnt been easy to track Ashtechs path since Javad Ashjaee founded the company in 1987 It merged with Magellan 10 years later in 1997 The new company carried the Magellan name and the Ashtech name disappeared In 2001 Magellan was acquired by Thales Group and renamed Thales Navigation In 2006 Thales Navigation was acquired by a private equity group named Shah Capital Partners SCP for 170 million Clearly SCP bought the company for the upside in the consumer market as GPS personal navigation devices PNDs were hot in 2006 In 2009 SCP sold the Magellan consumer GPS product division to MiTAC THE TRIMBLE GEOXH Explorer 6000 offers real time decimeter positioning photo capture and Internet connectivity for about 96 million and held the Magellan Professional brand which may have had little use for SCP as its growth opportunities were limited In 2010 SCP renamed Magellan Professional to Ashtech bringing back a storied name in GPS that had been in hibernation for 13 years The financial terms of the Trimble acquisition were not disclosed nor were details surrounding the combined product line or distribution channel although Spectra Precisions distribution channel will clearly benefit from Ashtech technology and brand name ASHTECHS MOBILE Mapper 100 features BLADE technology for GNSS challenged environments TRANSPORTATION Fastrax IT600 Receiver Module Integrates GPS GLONASS Fastrax Ltd has unveiled the Fastrax IT600 including GPS Russian based GLONASS Japanese QZSS and SBAS in a single receiver module The IT600 is designed to also support other positioning systems such as Europeanbased Galileo and Chinese Compass Beidou2 in the future The new receiver module is specifically designed to serve the needs of the automotive industry Enabling both GPS and GLONASS generally doubles the number of visible satellites compared with using GPS only reducing the time to first fix and increasing positioning accuracy especially while driving in urban canyons Fastrax IT600 provides reliability and accurate positioning even in challenging environments Fastrax said Fastrax IT600 is based on the newly introduced ST Teseo II GNSS chipset STA8088EX marking the first time a Fastrax module is based on a chipset from STMicroelectronics Volume production is estimated to start in October 2011 GPS World May 2011 www gpsworld com 16