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

To: arun gera who wrote (2724)	8/25/1998 4:59:00 PM
From: SKIP PAUL	Respond to of 3506

Snaptrack - Will it take the wireless positioning market? [skip] No !! Because - I beleive they are looking for a per hit charge. Operators are not going to go for that. Cellsite solutions, and in the phone solutions will be much more attractive for operators. I don't know much about Snaptrack, but they definitely have a good PR working for them.Must have some smart and well connected venture capitalists behind it, as it has been funded by the TI,H&Q fund, among others. The question is - where is Trimble in its development of an OEM solution for the wireless market? The GPS association's projections for the future size of GPS markets included a very large component for the wireless positioning market. How much will go to Trimble? Has Trimble already lost the race to Snaptrack (or Sirf)? [skip] Sirf is a non starter. They probably won't even get past the patents. Trimble has a cellsite solution and in the phone solution today. I think they will garner significant market share. Arun

To: arun gera who wrote (2724)	8/25/1998 6:03:00 PM
From: David	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3506

Snaptrack . . . . Here's an excerpt from their literature on the Web: "Performance. SnapTrack technology generally determines location to an accuracy of 5-50 meters, depending on the amount of blockage from foliage or large structures such as buildings. The system operates in a wide range of rural and urban environments and in attenuated signal areas like inside buildings, malls or automobiles with no external antennas. By contrast, network overlay systems perform poorly in these same environments because of an insufficient number or a suboptimal layout of receiver sites, or signal interference that seriously degrades accuracy. "Accuracy.Emergency services demand a high degree of location accuracy, but value-added services such as dispatch, driving directions and location-sensitive billing require even more precise location determination." [Emphasis added.] A Yahoo poster said that to work in buildings, the SnapTrack system would need a signal booster. You can see from the italicized phrases there are a couple of kickers here. "Location sensitive billing" certainly sounds like a "Gillette razor blade" strategy. Not bad if it works. 5-50 meters, though, doesn't sound too good. How would you know what building to send the rescue team to? I am not technically proficient here. Trimble has not been making fancy press release claims, but they do seem to have a good deal with TruePosition. Even the SnapTrack materials do not sound universally wonderful . . . say, in less urbanized areas. So I'm willing to wait and see right now. TRMB is definitely too low to sell, anyway.

To: arun gera who wrote (2724)	9/2/1998 8:45:00 PM
From: Jamse	Respond to of 3506

911 position location Arun, finally had some time to do some more research on the 911 position location market. Your question "Snaptrack - Will it take the wireless positioning market?" is a good one. It appears that the market is divided into two segments for 911 position location. The first is a handset based wireless location determination. SnapTrack and Sirf are using this approach to solve the problem. The second is network overlay technology (TDOA). Trimble and True Position are teaming together to use this method. I have not been able to find any documentation from Trimble on a handset solution. Skip Paul says it is available. If someone could point me to it I would appreciate it. It is difficult to tell how the technology is going to unfold but here are the basics as I see them. There are approximately 60 million cell phones in use now with PCS just coming on line. Trimble's network solution can get all the existing phones (there are approximately 77,000 cell sites in the US) working with the 911 mandate. It appears Sirf and SnapTrack only have handset solutions, and therefore, cannot address the existing phones. The Trimble-True Position solution is up and running in Houston. I could find no design wins for either SnapTrack or Sirf. There is, however, significant testing going on around the country with their systems. I don't think Trimble is the only company with a network solution. I'm sure Datum and some others are chasing this money maker. From the conference call Charles seemed to feel that he had a lock on it. David, thanks for the link to the NY Times. There were a lot of good links to other sites from there. From what I read, the additional ground stations will not be needed to meet the Federal requirements. Although, as you say, it may be needed for greater accuracy for things like location and monitoring services. I can post more on the subject later if anyone is interested. How low can Trimble go? jamse