Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 134

seventy-two corporate members by the end of that year. 82 Estimates put the
Japanese market at about half the size of the U.S. market, but it was growing
fast, particularly the car navigation segment. 83
Among U.S. manufacturers, Rockwell International, the key government
contractor from the outset of the gps program, saw the commercial portion of
its gps technology sales rise to 25 percent by 1994 . 84 In 1997 Magellan Systems,
which created the first commercial handheld gps receiver in 1989 and sup-
plied the nav 1000 to Desert Storm troops, bought Rockwell's vehicle naviga-
tion business. Eight thousand Hertz rental cars already featured Rockwell's
PathMaster gps system (under the “NeverLost” label), and the company mar-
keted it widely to other rental fleets, public safety agencies, utility companies,
real estate and sales professionals, and private vehicle owners. 85 The purchase
positioned Magellan as a leader in the worldwide vehicle navigation market,
projected to grow from $1.1 billion to more than $3 billion by 2000. 86 Magel-
lan, founded in 1986 in San Dimas, California, as a privately held company,
prospered during and after the Persian Gulf War and enjoyed such strong sales
in Europe that it established a wholly owned subsidiary in England in Decem-
ber 1991. 87 Magellan made gps products for commercial boating, outdoor rec-
reation, the military, surveying, oil and gas exploration, and forestry and made
components for original equipment manufacturers of systems such as autopi-
lots and vehicle tracking. 88 The company proved attractive to investors. Orbital
Sciences, a Virginia-based rocket and space systems manufacturer, bought
Magellan in 1994 for $50 million and sold it to Thales Navigation of France
for $70 million in 2001. A private equity fund, Shah Capital Partners, acquired
Thales in 2006 for $170 million and sold Magellan's Consumer Products Divi-
sion to MiTAC International, a corporation listed on the Taiwan Stock
Exchange, for an undisclosed amount in 2008. Throughout, Magellan, head-
quartered in Santa Clara, California, has remained a top consumer brand rec-
ognized for low-cost gps units for automobiles and recreational use.
Trimble Navigation, the Silicon Valley supplier of those “green position loca-
tors” to soldiers, emerged from Desert Storm a big winner. Charles Trimble,
a Hewlett Packard executive, and two partners from Hewlett Packard founded
the company in 1978, the same year the first Block i gps satellite launched. 89
Their original focus was high-end navigation systems for boating using Loran,
a ground-based radio-navigation system primarily for maritime users. As the
gps constellation grew and the luxury yacht market declined in the mid- to
late 1980s, Trimble shifted his business to gps products for scientific research,