Spin out from NXP Semiconductors receives significant investment to further develop software-based GPS business and to leverage Road Group portfolio
CeBIT 2008
ROAD Group Holding AG has announced today that it has purchased a controlling interest in NXP?s Location Technologies Unit and establish Geotate B.V.. The new company will be added to the growing portfolio of independently operating companies in the ROAD Group. Geotate B.V. will be headquartered in the Netherlands with major R&D facilities in the U.K. and led by former NXP executive Hans Streng. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Geotate stands for a unique and patented software/webservice technology which encompasses capturing snapshots of satellite signals and processing this data sometime later to determine the location where the snapshots were captured. Geotate?s store and process GPS technology requires low power and no start-up time, enabling features like automated geotagging of images and videos in digital cameras. Geotate was introduced to the industry in February at PMA, the annual gathering for camera manufacturers in Las Vegas.
"This investment by ROAD Group is a great leap forward for Geotate. It offers the company the necessary independence from the silicon-focused business to rapidly expand the business for our software/webservice-based GPS technology" says Geotate?s Chief Executive Officer, Hans Streng. "We are excited to join the ROAD Group and benefit from the leverage opportunities and the experience of its founders, industry veterans Ad Bastiaansen and Roel Pieper."
"Within ROAD Group?s strategy, Geotate is a very important piece of the puzzle as it brings geotagging capability to location based solutions," says Ad Bastiaansen, co-founder and CEO of Road Group. "This will help ROAD Group to drive the development of applications that add location data to any conceivable online source of information." Roel Pieper co-founder and Chairman of the ROAD group added: "The hardware needed for web based GPS solutions can be produced at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional GPS, shifting the focus from hardware to connectivity. There is an enormous opportunity for community and location based services. We?re stepping into the future of the web."
About Geotate
Geotate is a geo-software company whose solutions enable portable devices to automatically add a geotag to an object without compromising the user experience and the devices? resources. Geotate?s patented approach captures raw GPS satellite signals in the available memory that are later unlocked via a web-based service. This disruptive technology enables instant, intuitive "geotagging". Geotate is led by Chief Executive Officer Hans Streng and headquartered in the Netherlands with R&D facilities in the UK.
About the ROAD Group
The ROAD Group is fully engaged in the tremendous opportunities the market for locations based solutions currently offers. The Group is backed with a significant investment budget to be able to support its aggressive growth plans aiming at market out performance. The ROAD Group is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, and was founded in august 2007 by industry veterans Roel Pieper and Ad Bastiaansen.
MyGuide is the Group?s personal navigation brand and has been established over the past years as the number five player in Europe. After being acquired by ROAD Group the company has shown strong growth into new markets and transformed itself into an innovation leader. MyGuide personal navigation products have won numerous industry awards and are currently for sale in 22 countries.
ROAD Group has a majority interest in the German company OneStepAhead and an interest in the Korean company Bluebird. OneStepAhead is a Stuttgart-based software company that develops software to seamlessly integrate geodata of different map providers. Bluebird is active as a software developer of navigation and routing software for the Asian market.
ROAD Group aims to expand its portfolio of companies, which will all contribute to the concept of the ROAD Group.
