Financial news

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30 Mar 2009

u-blox announces the acquisition of Geotate

Press Release

Key terms of the transaction include:

  • Patented technology and products in the area of software GPS and geotagging GPS
  • Total consideration EUR 5.5 million in cash
    • of which EUR 2.0 million for a royalty free patent license arrangement with NXP B.V. for selected patents
    • and of which EUR 3.5 million for the outstanding shares of Geotate B.V.
  • u-blox will integrate the Geotate business into its existing activities to leverage and further strengthen the mutual commercial activities

 

Through the acquisition, u-blox will gain access to a broad GPS patent portfolio and will be able to expand its GPS offering with GPS geotagging products. These products are based on Geotate’s software GPS technology “Capture and Process”, which enables portable devices to automatically add a geotag to a picture in a fraction of a second without compromising the user experience or the devices' power consumption. Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs and video.

 

The potential of geotagging in cameras is promising: The volume of digital images is growing rapidly and along with it the need for web-based sharing, browsing and searching. IMS Research forecasts that the GPS Camera market will grow to over 40 million units in 2012, across both professional and consumer orientated cameras. They highlight Geotate's Capture and Process GPS technology as enablers of this potential growth in their research report "The Worldwide Market for GPS in Portable Devices”. Popular photosharing websites such as Flickr, Picasaweb and Apple’s latest version of iPhoto already offer users new ways to further organize and share their images based on location-tags.

 

“The opportunity to acquire a company with extensive GPS geotagging expertise accelerates u-blox’ strategic initiative to advance its offering for the consumer mass market,” said Thomas Seiler, CEO of u-blox. “With two unique solutions – our existing standalone u-blox 5 positioning technology and the new GPS geotagging technology - we are uniquely positioned to offer camera manufacturers solutions for high volume, low power and space sensitive devices.”

 

“u-blox is recognized in the industry as a leading global supplier of GPS solutions,” added Hans Streng, CEO of Geotate. “This is a clear win-win as our customers will benefit from the combination of a revolutionary technology and a globally well established and trusted partner. Together, we will be able to drive our shared vision of accelerating the development and adoption of location-enabled products for consumers and commercial mass markets.”

 

Analyst and press conference call in German, Monday, 30 March, 14pm

u-blox will be hosting an analyst and press conference call in German. To receive webcast log in details, please contact:

 

Gitte Jensen

Corporate Communications Manager

e-mail: gitte.jensen@u-blox.com

Phone: +41 (44) 722 74 86

 

For additional information, please see the presentation on our website:
https://www.u-blox.com/en/investor-press-releases/u-blox-announces-acquisition-geotate