Friday, June 5. 2009

Research In Motion acquires Dash Navigation

I first saw the report of the acquisition on GPS Business News (subscription required, but I want to give them credit!); now it's well confirmed. No terms of the deal were shared.

TechCrunch reports "RIM refused to comment on how Dash will be incorporated into its business but it’s safe to assume that the company will use Dash’s technology to upgrade the GPS in their devices in some capacity." The article goes on to report that RIM might be able to do good things with the platform, considering how many people currently carry Blackberries.

Twice notes some other entries into the "traffic probe" space: Waze and Aha Mobile.

Many, including this InformationWeek blog are suggesting the acquisition is like that of NAVTEQ by Nokia. While I agree it'll help in the nav space, it's really not the same sort of acquisition at all in my book.

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Not like Navteq by Nokia at all. A lot like gate5 by Nokia. Pay attention HTC, Asus and other handset makers. Navigation is still the #1 "app" desired by mobile phone buyers and the pickings are getting slimmer. I'm just baffled why they would pick up a company with mediocre navigation software and easily replicated "probe" technology when better companies like Horizon Navigation, Nav N Go, and even Route66 are available. I'm guessing the price was pretty low.

#1 Jack Smith on 2009-06-08 12:15 (Reply)

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