Research In Motion Acquires GPS Company Dash Navigation

Research In Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry has acquired a GPS company called Dash Navigation.  What this possibly means is that Dash may get more sophisticated GPS technology.  Dash develops the GPS product Dash Express.

Dash Navigation was funded by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital when starting up.  The company created interconnected GPS devices so that Dash Express owners can feed traffic reports to each other.  However Dash has a hard time competing against companies like TomTom and Garmin.  Due to the lack of sales, Dash had to lay off 65% of their staff and change around their business plan.

RIM did not specify what they plan on doing with Dash.  This acquisition is very similar to when Nokia bought out NAVTEQ for $8 billion.

[via TechCrunch]

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