GPS was a military system that SiRF set out to fit into a dashboard gadget. The San Jose chipmaker designed receivers that found satellites fast, used little power and cost little enough for consumer devices. Its chips went into car navigation units and the handheld navigators that were selling fast in 2004. When SiRF went public that April, phones were starting to add location features too. SiRF wanted its chip inside every device that needed to know where it was.

Shrinking the GPS Receiver

Sanjai Kohli, Dado Banatao and Kanwar Chadha founded SiRF in 1995. GPS receivers then were bulky, slow to get a fix and power hungry. SiRF designed chipsets and software that worked with weak signals, such as those in cities and under tree cover. It sold the chips to device makers, who built navigators, car systems and tracking gear around them. SiRF became the largest independent maker of consumer GPS chips.

Squeezed by the Smartphone

SiRF priced its IPO at $12 a share in April 2004 on Nasdaq. Sales grew with the boom in personal navigation devices. Then the market shifted. Phones began to do navigation for free, and the big phone chipmakers built GPS into their own chips. Dedicated navigators sold fewer units, and SiRF's prices fell. In 2009 SiRF merged with CSR, the British Bluetooth chipmaker, in an all-stock deal.

Cover: Diana Presiding over Navigation and Fishing, from Seven Planetary Gods, Jan Saenredam. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for Diana guiding navigation (finding your way).