Buying up LBS chip companies

In this week's Computerworld (written by John Ribeiro),
SiRF Technology Holdings Inc. plans to release a software platform for phone operators later this year that it hopes will accelerate the use of location-based services in mobile phones, the company's president and CEO said.
SiRF sells chips and software for use in consumer Global Positioning System (GPS) products. It thinks 60% of mobile phones will include GPS capabilities in the next three years or so, but a key challenge is getting operators to offer location-based services to their subscribers, SiRF CEO Michael Canning said in an interview this week. Fewer than 10% of phones have GPS capabilities today, he estimated.
and
The client applications available today are mainly for mobile phones with a lot of memory, said Ashu Pande, vice president of marketing for the wireless segment at SiRF. They include a child-locator, for helping parents keep track of their children. The application is being offered by SK Telecom Co. in Seoul, Korea, in a child's phone made by Bellwave Co., also in Seoul.
SiRF's strategy is to integrate other functions into its GPS chips that are often available in mobile devices but typically require separate chips. Last month, it introduced its SiRFLinkI chip, for example, which combines GPS and Bluetooth capabilities.
This combining of chips has long been critical to the success of mobile phone LBS technology
About a dozen radio technologies could potentially go into mobile phones, including FM broadcast, GPS, Wi-Fi and WiMax. The opportunity for SiRF is to incorporate these into its GPS chips, which would reduce power consumption and the cost of making phones, Canning said.
If the company wants to add capabilities like Wi-Fi and digital video to its chips, it would have to acquire companies with the technology, Canning said. "If it is a key thrust for you, you need to acquire, otherwise you find yourself in a cost model where licensing fees can be a nuisance," he said

Wish I had the money to go on a buy up rampage - wait til the Yahoo!s and Microsofts dig into their pockets!
In December, SiRF acquired Impulsesoft Pvt., a Bluetooth embedded software company in Bangalore, India. It also bought Kisel Microelectronics AB last year, a Stockholm-based company that specialized in radio frequency circuit design.

Technorati Tags Location Based Services, LBS, GPS, SiRF Technology Holdings, John Ribeiro,