Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 135

surveying, and other commercial applications. Trimble sold three million shares
of stock on the nasdaq exchange in 1990, becoming the first publicly traded
gps company. 90 From 1990 to 1991 Trimble's sales more than doubled, to $151
million from $63 million, and profits more than tripled, to $7 million from $2
million. 91 Revenues came back down to earth following the war, but Trimble
continued diversifying its products and customer base and became a leader
in developing real-time kinematics (continuously updated gps while moving),
“plug and play” gps sensors for laptops or digital devices, and gps integrated
with cellular communications circuitry and other manufacturer's central pro-
cessing units. Early on Trimble expanded gps technology applications through
partnerships with companies like Caterpillar and Nikon, but after 2003 it
increasingly acquired smaller companies to broaden its reach across diverse
markets. The company has focused on integrated solutions rather than boxed
products. By 2012 Trimble's revenues exceeded $1.2 billion, it had extensive
international operations, and it offered more than five hundred products for
use in agriculture, construction, communications, engineering, mapping, sur-
veying, and precise timing. 92
In the United States gps car navigation remained confined mostly to pro-
fessional users and private luxury automobile owners until after 2000. By that
time, improved signal accuracy had attracted more players to the industry, and
declining prices finally opened a mass market for standalone personal naviga-
tion devices sold through consumer electronics retailers. The era of suction-
cup- mounted gps units with cigarette-lighter cords had arrived. Leading
makers of in-dash car audio systems jumped into the fray, along with compa-
nies rooted in gps. The Consumer Electronics Association reported $32.8 mil-
lion in U.S. sales of aftermarket navigation products during the first three
quarters of 2003, a 33 percent increase over the same period in 2002. 93 Magel-
lan introduced one of the first 3.5-inch touch screen units with built-in street-
level maps, points of interest, and turn-by-turn directions—at a retail price of
$1,299. 94
In 2004 “mobile navigation” made its first appearance as a separate head-
ing in npd Group's “Market Share Reports by Category,” an annual report
compiled by the Port Washington, New York, market research company. 95 npd
uses point-of-sale data from selected retailers to track a broad array of con-
sumer electronics. The company put the U.S. mobile navigation category total
at $72.8 million and reported that the top five ranked brands—Magellan, Gar-
min, Pioneer, Alpine, and Kenwood—captured 95.4 percent of the market. 96