There's a news release out today about Guidepoint selecting Laird Technologies to develop a vehicle M2M device. Out product team has actually been working with Laird for several months now on this product, which will give us an additional manufacturing source and engineering partner with world-class capabilities.
Laird is a big company that is known for designing and supplying custom, performance critical components in the wireless and advanced electronics space. They have a ton of expertise in RF (radio frequency) technology, they're a big company (10,000 employees globally) and the know the auto business, which was a critical factor for us.
So many of the people in the telematics business are telecom guys who are trying to learn the auto industry - these days, that's like trying to get a Ph.D. in six month's time. One of our strengths at Guidepoint is that we've been hanging around the auto business for most of our careers. In fact, every single memeber of the senior management team has been doing auto-related work for at least a decade. Both our CEO (Rand Mueller) and our VP of Marketing (Geoff Dixon) have been developing and peddling technology to car dealers, expediters and OEMs since the late '70s. (Sorry guys, you are that old!)
We kind of believe that our automotive experience, coupled with the new partnership with Laird, will bring us huge opportunity in the long run. Our view is that someday, a product like Guidepoint will be standard equipment on all cars, and having an established Tier 1 supplier like Laird as a partner can only help position us in the cross-hairs of the OEMs when the time comes.
Here's what Rand said in the news release: "Throughout our ten-year history, we have focused on building successful partnerships with best-in-breed companies. Partnering with a company such as Laird Technologies gives us additional opportunity to accelerate the evolution of GPS tracking technology that's easy to use, easy to install, and easy to sell."
