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Technology Stocks : Trimble Navigation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: arun gera who wrote (1915)	12/6/1997 9:17:00 PM
From: Step1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3506

Arun, thank you for your comments, here is my last post >>Basically a North American system would necessitate about 150 WAAS stations, perhaps with some back up capabilities, not quite the thousands of units I would like to see needed ..<< I will clarify the WAAS contract, after looking at the messages I got from NoVatel: me: how many WAAS units will be needed? NoVatel: Not clear today, depends on results of tests, probably between 35 to 50 (stations) with three receivers each. >Don't bet on companies based on contracts they hold. What happens after the contract? Better to find out how their products are doing in the commercial world. < Arun, contracts are sales therefore this is the real commercial world. These units are not exactly off the shelf either so they will always be sold on a contractual basis, sometimes including installation, validation or maintenance by the manufacturer. What happens after the contract? hopefully more contracts... >>When I cross checked with PN (Pelorus Navigation) I was told that the state of the Russian system was not reliable enough for aviation purposes ( well I am sure the Russians use it for just that and other purposes but perhaps not to Western safety standards) << >Check MIT Lincoln Labs web-site for the latest on the reliability of Glonasss. I don't think pure Glonass receivers will make it big. GPS-Glonass combo can provide redundancy that is valued in certain applications (aviation, timing).< Thank you for the reference. >>What kind of planes?>> > Cirrus Design makes a small plane for recreational flyers. Costs around $150,000. The company claims that there is a big market for such planes which are priced like an expensive car.< With Wall Street on fire and the DOW going to 10000 I bet there is a big market for just about anything. I call it "gravy" though. With a downturn, they are the first to go down... and then you just want meat and potatoes in your plate... >>I have not bought in, except for PN, which is in a real small niche with Honeywell and doesn't compete in most fields with TRMB,>> > PN is in a small niche. Depends completely on Honeywell.< No way a small company like PN is going to have the financial resources to show case the tech. Their advantage is not in marketing power, but rather in very specialized, focused research and development in the landing/take-off phase of flight. They are smaller and presumably have much lower overhead than a mega player like HON. PN's president only made 84,000 CAD a year from 1992-1997, no raise. Mind you he probably owns a zillion low cost options on the stock but still, as far as operating cost, they were quite low, with most of the money (a lot from the Canadian government) going to research for all those years... Sorry, I am getting a bit off track here... >For now, Honeywell is advertizing heavily on SLR-2000. So, that is good for PN. The market is big, but sales are not coming all that fast. I have been hearing of the Newark and Minneapolis installations for almost three years.< Yeah, the FAA is one mega beast to deal with, although they are expecting commercial certification in Jan 1998 now. ( the system is already certified though, they are doing it "on-type") >Don't be too sure that Trimble will not have products in that market. See the recent Trimble patent on pseudolites. Other competition includes Raytheon and a small but knowledgable company called Integrenautics, which is an example of a company that Trimble could acquire.< I am not suggesting that there won't be new entrants, in fact that is probably what is limiting the sales for now. Companies like to have the choice of suppliers and they like to be able to evaluate different systems etc... The day another manufacturer is certified for SLS (Satellite landing Systems) is the day these stocks will take off, the market having been confirmed for the Wall Street Gurus. It will not take as long as it took PN either to gain certification since the guidelines are now established. I am sorry if my comments have gone off the TRMB thread a bit. Perhaps they would be more appropriate on the PN or NoVatel threads. however I think that with the relatively still small number of players in the field, anything that happens in one area is related to the other as well. Arun or others, I would certainly like a pointer or link to information about the 4800 series that has perhaps been discussed on this thread already so I can get a better feeling of where and why the 4800 is so superior as you have mentioned: >Novatel had a large inventory through the Nikon channel, which eased up in the last quarter. Let us see what happens in the coming quarter after Trimble 4800 hit the market.< all the best sg