U‑blox acquires full ownership in Sapcorda joint venture

Positioning company u‑blox has acquired full ownership of Sapcorda Services GmbH, a joint venture formed by u‑blox, Bosch, Geo++ and Mitsubishi Electric in 2017.

Sapcorda — SAfe and Precise CORrection DAta — provides advanced GNSS augmentation services for the high-precision GNSS mass market. The joint venture was formed by the four companies to bring scalable, affordable and high-quality GNSS positioning solutions to industrial, automotive and consumer applications.

Relevant industrial applications include autonomous vehicles, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV), machine automation, surveying, monitoring and other advanced navigation applications.

Within the automotive sector, applications include automated driving and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), lane-accurate navigation, telematics and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication.

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Sapcorda Services GmbH is a GNSS service provider focusing on the emerging high-precision GNSS mass markets. The company has designed its technology and service offerings to serve high-volume automotive, industrial and consumer markets.

Sapcorda developed its advanced SAPA service based on open formats, and has specifically tailored it for industrial and automotive markets. It uses real-time kinematic (RTK) and precise point positioning (PPP).

Launched in January 2020 in the U.S. and Europe, SAPA Services have been expanded to full coverage of the contiguous U.S. and 32 countries in Europe. Distribution of the service via an additional geostationary satellite L-band signal also has been announced.

“We appreciate the support and cooperation of all the joint venture shareholders. As a part of u‑blox, I see enormous potential for our technology,” said Botho Graf zu Eulenburg, CEO of Sapcorda.

The acquisition of Sapcorda expands u‑blox’s suite of location services complementing its existing data services, including its assistance data and communication service offerings. Sapcorda has focused on establishing a platform from which to bring GNSS augmentation services to the mass market by delivering on robustness, reliability and end-to-end security as it relates to performance.

Full ownership of Sapcorda will also enable u‑blox to serve customers more efficiently, the company said, by streamlining certain processes, including reducing implementation time to market and simplifying the integration process for customers.

“The acquisition of Sapcorda reinforces our position as a leader driving innovation in the most advanced areas of GNSS positioning technology,” said Thomas Seiler, CEO of u‑blox. “It represents another step forward in the execution of our strategy, which is to deliver value to our customers by means of a comprehensive ‘silicon-to-cloud’ set of solutions and offerings.”

Sapcorda operates in Europe and in the U.S. with offices in Berlin and Hanover in Germany and in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the U.S.