Massive Layoff at Dash and New Business Model

Dash is laying off 50 jobs, which is more than half its employees. The company can’t financially continue to work the way it has: building hardware, software and services. Dash will drop the hardware design, which is arguably its weak point, and focus on licensing its software and infrastructure to others (GPS or phone makers). Dash uses a cellular network to transmit information to and from the GPS. They also use it, with some success, to gather real-time road conditions from their user base, especially on smaller roads.

Their idea is interesting, and while the actual implementation is a bit complicated for stand-alone GPS systems (it requires a phone number), it is simple to implement on mobile phones. WiMax might help with non-cellular devices at some point… I suppose that Dash will try to “own” the back-end infrastructure which would put them effectively in control of the network. If they do well, other like Google or even AT&T might start to compete in that space. Good luck dash!