Tuesday, November 4. 2008

Dash (Internet Connected GPS) Lays Off 50, Will End Hardware Sales

Those 50 are 2/3 of the company's staffers. Those with devices in hand will continue to receive support and updates, though it's not clear for how long. The company has investor money to stay alive through 2009.

Other changes:

- a move to a B2B rather than B2C model
- end of hardware business
- will license the platform to nav, smartphone and netbook devices
- CEO will step down

The challenges, said new CEO Rob Currie in an interview with Om Malik had to do with the cost of going to end users, the challenge of PND and phones in the nav space and the economy. Malik suggests we may see Dash apps for smartphones, like the iPhone, soon.

My take: Dash was the first ones in the pool and the company took too big a leap. The high original cost ($600) with few distribution channels (and thus few models to be seen and tried - think Amazon's Kindle) were a challenge. The big sell of combining user information to reveal traffic challenges was a great story, but one that never seemed to reach critical mass for use. I do agree with Malik that we will have more interconnected devices, the Dash may just end up a footnote in that story.

- GigaOm via ZDnet

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