Mr. Chadha: We started the company in 1995, and our focus was to bring the advantages of GPS-enabled location technology to the mainstream consumer market. Traditionally GPS technology and the market focus were clearly on defense, which is what the original GPS system was designed for, and then moved toward professional applications like professional survey, timing, ship navigation and aircraft navigation. SiRF started with the mission of bringing the advantages of GPS technology to the mass market. We identified the mobile devices that people were using in day-to- day life, and how to integrate location technology into those devices. The four platforms we identified were the cellular phone platform, automotive, mobile computing including devices such as PDAs and notebook computers, and finally what we call the embedded consumer device platform ' everything from child locator systems and personal navigation systems to personal entertainment systems with location capabilities. Today, years later, we are glad to see that most of the initial vision of where we felt the technology was going to go and the markets that were going to emerge have become a reality.
TWST: What is the competitive situation like and what advantages
might you enjoy within it?
Mr. Chadha: That's a very interesting question. The competitive
situation has changed over a period of time. When we started,
since we were really the first GPS chipset vendor to focus on the
consumer markets, there really wasn't any competition. Nobody
really had the vision of addressing the needs of this market.
Some of the existing companies like Trimble, Ashtech and Rockwell
that were in the professional or defense market did try to enter
the consumer market, but then realized that it wasn't the right
focus for them. So over a period of time SiRF has built a very
strong position in the consumer GPS market. Today, our biggest
competitors are in the mobile phone area, which is the highest
growth market segment. They include companies like QUALCOMM,
which are integrating GPS into CDMA devices, while SiRF's focus
is more on the GSM, UMTS and NEXTEL (iDEN) type systems. The
automobile market is where I would say there is still significant
competition, primarily in the Japanese market, where there are a
number of Japanese module suppliers that have a very strong
presence in the automobile industry there. In Europe there are
companies like ST MicroElectronics. In the mobile computer market
I would say SiRF is pretty much the single player. In the
consumer segment, most of the competition is in-house design, and
companies like Garmin and Magellan have their own chipsets. And
there really isn't much merchant-market competition.
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