u-blox announces the acquisition of Geotate

30 March 2009, 9:20am

Thalwil, Switzerland March 30, 2009 - u-blox Holding AG today announced that u-blox AG has acquired Geotate B.V. (a joint venture
between Road Group Holding AG and NXP B.V.). Geotate develops state-of-the-art GPS geotagging solutions based on software GPS
technology and related web services. The acquisition represents an important strategic step for u-blox, as it allows the company to expand its position in the consumer markets with unique GPS geotagging solutions for digital camera manufacturers and other portable device manufacturers.

Key terms of the transaction include:

* Patented technology and products in the area of software GPS and
geotagging GPS

* Total consideration EUR 5.5 million in cash
* of which EUR 2.0 million for a royalty free patent license arrangement with NXP B.V. for selected patents
* and of which EUR 3.5 million for the outstanding shares of Geotate B.V.

* u-blox will integrate the Geotate business into its existing activities to leverage and further strengthen the mutual commercial
activities.

Through the acquisition, u-blox will gain access to a broad GPS patent portfolio and will be able to expand its GPS offering with GPS geotagging products. These products are based on Geotates software GPS technology Capture and Process, which enables portable devices to automatically add a geotag to a picture in a fraction of a second without compromising the user experience or the devices' power consumption. Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs and video.

The potential of geotagging in cameras is promising: The volume of digital images is growing rapidly and along with it the need for
web-based sharing, browsing and searching. IMS Research forecasts that the GPS Camera market will grow to over 40 million units in 2012, across both professional and consumer orientated cameras. They highlight Geotate's Capture and Process GPS technology as enablers of this potential growth in their research report "The Worldwide Market for GPS in Portable Devices. Popular photosharing websites such as Flickr, Picasaweb and Apples latest version of iPhoto already offer users new ways to further organize and share their images based on location-tags.

The opportunity to acquire a company with extensive GPS geotagging expertise accelerates u-blox strategic initiative to advance its
offering for the consumer mass market, said Thomas Seiler, CEO of u-blox. With two unique solutions our existing standalone u-blox 5
positioning technology and the new GPS geotagging technology - we are uniquely positioned to offer camera manufacturers solutions for high volume, low power and space sensitive devices.

u-blox is recognized in the industry as a leading global supplier of GPS solutions, added Hans Streng, CEO of Geotate. This is a clear win-win as our customers will benefit from the combination of a revolutionary technology and a globally well established and trusted partner. Together, we will be able to drive our shared vision of accelerating the development and adoption of location-enabled products for consumers and commercial mass markets.

u-blox

Geo: International