Javad (the guy) has been in the GPS business a long time: He started
Ashtech back in 1987 after leaving Trimble to make precision GPS stuff.
In 96, he left Ashtech, which became part of Magellan, which became part
of Thales, which then became not part of Thales, and somewhere along the
line they changed names back to Ashtech.
He started Javad Positoning Systems, focusing on, among other things,
precision equipment for the surveying market at low cost. Javad's
surveying areas of business were bought by Topcon (a big player in
surveying instruments) in 2000, with Javad retaining non-surveying
stuff. (like making filters for Light Squared, perhaps?) He also got
hooked up with the Russians and GLONASS somewhere along there.
He's most definitely an technology entrepreneur: knows the technology,
knows how to present it, knows how to find market niches to exploit. I
don't get the impression that he's a purely market valuation kind of guy
(that's why he left Ashtech), but he's definitely also not a sit in
the lab kind of guy.
Cheap consumer GPS and the wide use of GPS for timing applications
wouldn't be where it is today if not for entreprenurial folks like
Charlie Trimble and his kleenex box sized receiver. Javad worked for
him early on, and left over a difference of opinion... I suspect that
they're more similar than different. Surely, DoD contractors like
Rockwell and Magnavox weren't looking to put GPS receivers in every cell
site or cell phone. You've all seen that picture from the 80s of
Rockwell's handheld GPS concept.. looks sort of like a HP calculator
keyboard with a patch antenna. It was never really a reality (wooden
block mockup for the photos, from what I understand) and was a "concept"
to justify developing an ASIC for doing GPS (if we get funding to
develop this ASIC, then we can build this cool widget).
I remember seeing a Trimble Scout when it first came out and thought,
this is a cool device and will make a huge difference. It was so much
smaller than Magellan's big brick like thing.
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