Monday, February 16, 2009

Skyhook Wireless nabs GPS deal with TI

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Boston-based hybrid geographical positioning system developer Skyhook Wireless Inc. has closed a new deal with Texas Instruments Inc., through which the chip maker will include the Skyhook software on its NaviLink and WiLink products.

The agreement also includes the possibility of future product development between the two companies. The tandem will be demonstrating the new product sets at the World Mobile Congress, being held this week in Barcelona, Spain.

The deal with Texas Instruments also caps a series of chip-maker deals for Skyhook over the past six months. Skyhook’s positioning technology, which uses data from the Global Positioning System as well as a proprietary database of more than 100 million wi-fi access points worldwide, is now being used by a handful of the largest mobile chip makers in the world, including Broadcom Corp., Qualcomm Inc., and both Calif.-based SiRF Technology Holdings Inc. and Great Britain’s CSR PLC, which announced a merger of the two companies earlier this month.

According to company collateral, Skyhook’s combination of wi-fi, GPS and other navigational tools, allows the technology to find the geo-location points of a given user in under one second.

Founded in 2003, Skyhook is privately held and has raised $17 million in venture funding from a variety of investors, including RRE Ventures of New York, Bain Capital of Boston, Intel Capital of California and CommonAngels of Lexington.