GPS anyone?

ICE PEOPLE

Michael L Canning

Michael L Canning, president and CEO of the US-based SiRF Technology Inc, likes to narrate the story of a Philippines-based gasoline company which managed to prevent oil pilferage.

How did it do this? By fixing a global positioning system (GPS) device on the oil tankers, the company was able to track the movements of its fleet.

Even in the US, he recalls, a plumbing company kept tabs on its workforce with the help of GPS-enabled cell phones, so improving its bottomline. "Mobile phones will be one of the biggest markets for GPS," says Canning.

Clearly, he's hot on GPS. That's predictable "� SiRF claims that it is the world leader in the GPS chip set market and has more than a 40 per cent market share (he says that though Motorola and Qualcomm also have a presence in GPS, they are smaller).

GPS, says Canning, has many interesting consumer and commercial applications. The technology, which employs radio frequencies and satellites signals for location information, can be used in car navigation systems, cellular phones, fleet management systems, mobile computers and other consumer products.

Canning explains that the US government has mandated that all mobile phones must have location technology embedded in them by 2005. Currently, only 30 million phones out of the 500 million worldwide are GPS-enabled.

Gradually, more and more handset manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and LG are embedding GPS in their products. What is more, GPS-enabled laptops too will hit the market, and these could be made city-ready: if you boot your machine in another city, it will be able to recognise the place and even supply you with a list of the closest wi-fi hot spots.

SiRF Technology's CEO was in the capital last month to inaugurate the company's first development centre outside the US, at Noida. Set up with an investment of $1 million, Canning says that another $3 million will be invested in it next year.

The nine year old company set up its centre in India because of the country's "high-quality" engineers who understand English. The centre started with 10 people and will be 25-people strong by year end. "We will double this number next year," adds Canning.

The expansion is in line with Canning's background. The SiRF board member is known for driving innovation and product expansion at companies. He has 20 years experience in the semicondutor industry and is also on the board of VL Inc., the VoIP software company.