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Geoinformatics_05-2009
interview growth, inhibited by the very high cost of these cameras. and there are already three competitors chasing this slower growth, high-cost camera segment. as you observe, the rolleimetric product line, and the staff that developed it, are a very strong asset to trimble one that we pursued to increase our depth in metric imaging to apply towards our strategy. fig. 3 the summit evolution digital photogrammetric workstation (dpw) that is used for feature data collection employing 3d stereo-viewing techniques. gp with regard to toposys, which was also acquired in september 2008, it seems that a similar situation has arisen to that of rolleimetric in that the toposys company s main product is now being offered by trimble as the trimble harrier corridor mapping system . (i) does this mean that the toposys name will also disappear? (ii) will the toposys falcon line of airborne laser systems which were of great technical interest, but were not a commercial success now be dropped from the division s product line? ks trimble s brand is recognized worldwide, especially in the markets that the geospatial division will focus on, so we will operate under the trimble brand. your observation regarding the falcon ii product is correct, with the underlying lidar technology being well over 10 years old, and the product itself being about 10 years old. the falcon ii product has been discontinued since several of its subsystems were no longer in production due to their use of now obsolete components. but the technology, expertise, and know-how developed with the falcon ii are now part of our dna. going forward, we will focus on the harrier systems (fig. 7), which are seeing increasing adoption in the market. ness was and remains a very small portion of the business, operated in the province of quebec, canada. this service business has functioned as a test track for the development of the products and solutions business. trimble predominately provides products, solutions, and servicesfor-service-companies to its customers. we are committed to this role, and will operate the geospatial division similarly. of the four acquired companies, geo-3d has progressed the furthest toward addressing a specific vertical market that being the transportation segment with converged roadway asset management and pavement management solutions (fig. 4). our focus is to see these converged systems achieve high market penetration, and continue to automate the detection and recognition of more types of assets. gp trimble acquired rolleimetric from rollei gmbh in september 2008. this appears to have resulted in a quite different situation to that of the other acquisitions in that rollei continues to operate as a separate brand in the consumer camera market and remains quite independent from trimble. (i) is this the reason for the change of title of the rolleimetric operation to be the metric imaging department of trimble holdings gmbh that now appears on its web site? (ii) does this mean that the rolleimetric name will now disappear? ks yes, that is correct for both questions. trimble acquired the metric imaging business (technology and product lines) of rollei and employed all the metric imaging staff. the metric imaging business operated under the name rolleimetric. the rollei business for professional medium format and consumer cameras continues under the rollei brand. trimble acquired the right to use the rolleimetric brand name for a transition period, but immediately began re-branding the rolleimetric products under the trimble brand (fig. 5). we will refer to the rolleimetric brand name in some of our communications during the transition period to highlight the strong technical history of what is now the metric imaging department within the geospatial division. gp to most outside observers, it does seem quite remarkable that the applanix company, (which trimble acquired in 2003), does not form part of the new geospatial division. on the one hand, the applanix gps/ins products have often formed integral parts of the airborne and terrestrial mapping systems offered by geo-3d, rollei metric and toposys. on the other hand, applanix also offers products that compete directly with those being offered by these three companies that form part of the geospatial division. examples of this competition are (a) the applanix dss cameras that compete directly with the rolleimetric aic airborne digital cameras; (b) the applanix landmark vehicle-based mobile mapping system that competes with the similar geo-3d trident-3d system; and (c) the applanix airborne systems that couple the dss camera and the pos av gps/imu unit with a riegl laser scanner (e.g. as supplied to limitless llc) and compete with the trimble/toposys harrier system with similar components. please could you explain this situation of applanix not forming part of the geospatial division and outline how these actual and potential overlaps and competitions between products are being resolved and managed within trimble. gp the current rolleimetric line of aic modular digital mapping cameras which is available in single, dual, triple and quadruple configurations would appear to be one of the strongest assets of the new geospatial division with considerable potential for commercial sales. can we expect to see further development of this particular product line for example, resulting in a really large-format digital aerial frame camera? ks we will proceed in the opposite direction; toward the development of smaller cameras that are purpose built for high-precision work on engineering scale projects with rapid turnaround of information to allow rapid decision making (fig. 6). the large-format camera market exhibits smaller fig. 4 the trimble road asset inventory system is based on the geo-3d trident mobile mapping system. 8 july/august 2009
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