I’ve been a huge fan of Dash Navigation and their two-way connected Dash Express since they attempted to revolutionize the PND industry earlier this year. Unfortunately though, the company was in tough from the beginning. Manufacturing hardware requires thick overheads, and they found themselves fighting for market share against Garmin and TomTom, amongst others.
We’ve seen the price of the Dash Express fall drastically over the year as well, at times as low as $199.99 from an initial price of $399.99. Obviously the company never found a price point that resulted in profitable sales of the Dash. And despite, the open source platform that allowed for 3rd party applications, Dash has undoubtedly been negatively effected by the near ubiquity of GPS-enabled mobile phones.
Hence a drastic change in the company’s business model. While owners of the Dash Express will still have access to all the associated amenities through Dash Navigation, the company has ceased manufacturing the PND’s, moving from a consumer-focused business to a business-to-business entity.
They’ll license the software platform used on the Dash Express to other PND, mobile handset, and mobile internet device manufacturers, and focus on application development now and in the future. The strategic changes have resulted in layoffs as well. Approximately 50 employees, mainly in sales and marketing, have been let go and founder/CEO Paul Lego apparently let himself go, in order to be replaced by former COO Rob Currie.
I think the strategic change is a smart move. While the Dash Express was the world’s first truly connected two-way automotive GPS device, it was the only product on Dash Navigation’s roster. This confined them to selling on the internet, as one product doesn’t provide enough leverage to get bricks-and-mortar retail space. That left the company little chance to promote the Dash to mainstream consumers. Plus, newer smartphones have more processing power and faster data transfer capabilities than the hardware powering the Dash. It seems to make more sense to take advantage of hardware manufactured elsewhere, cutting Dash Navigation’s costs drastically, and transfer their software/application development expertise to established platforms. After all, app stores are all the rage these days.
The changes leave Dash with enough money to continue operations through the end of 2009 without additional funding or profitability. So I wish the company luck, and hope in the next year they can revolutionize their own business from the inside out.