Mitac’s plan to hollow out Navman

The Taiwanese owner of the New Zealand-founded GPS company is to lay off 25 of its 73 remaining Auckland staff. The redundancies will take affect next Friday.

For one former Navman manager, the hollowing out represents a sad end for a Kiwi high-tech success story – or at least any meaningful local presence: "When Mitac took over [in 2007] they pledged to keep as many jobs as possible in New Zealand. But even then I didn't believe it."

Navman was founded by NBR Rich Lister Peter Maire.

Mr Marie sold the GPS device maker to US company Brunswick for around $104 million in a two-part deal that closed in 2004.

At that time, Navman had around 300 staff at its Northcote, Auckland headquarters.

Brunswick immediately laid off around 5% of staff.

In March 2007, Brunswick announced it was going sell Navman, splitting up the company in the process.

At the time of the sale, redundancy notices were sent to around 100 staff as a number of product development functions were moved off-shore.

Navman’s marine GPS division was sold to Norway’s Navico; it’s fleet management and telematics business to US company Prairie Capital, which today runs it as Navman Wireless.

The highest profile division - Navman’s in-car navigation unit - went to Taiwanese company Mitac.

More redundancies followed, including eight earlier this year.

A the same time, Navman marine managers in Australia and the US defected to Fusion Electronics, the marine start-up founded by Mr Maire.

Now, with Navman’s Auckland staff down to 73 NBR reveal can reveal that Mitac plans to take staff down to 48. The numbers were confirmed this afternoon by Navman New Zealand GM Andrew Blakey.

Application software and product testing positions are being relocated to Mitac offices in Taiwan.

Mr Blakey said that of the 48 remaining staff, 25 would be in high-end development positions, working on navigation software for the three GPS brands in Mitac's stable: Navman, Magellon and Mio.

The news is not all bad in the Navman world, however.

Prairie Capital has kept most Navman Wireless staff in New Zealand. On July 1 the company renewed a major GPS tracking contract with Telecom, which covers 8500 vehicles, and it is currently advertising an engineering role.

NBR understands that Navico’s marine business is also solid.

But in car navigation, Navman has lost its former preimment position, with US company Garmin and the Netherlands-based TomTom now leading sales in an increasingly crowded field. Another problem: commercial and freebie cellphone mapping software - from Nokia's $US8 billion purchase Navteq to the mobile version of Google Maps - that nowcompetes with traditional, dedicated GPS devices.