This letter appeared in the February 2008 JAVAD GNSS ad in The American Surveyor:
I Have Been Waiting for This…
I envied Steve Jobs’ enthusiasm when he announced: "I have been waiting for this chance for the past two years." It was at Mac World 2007, where he introduced the Apple iPhone, after returning to Apple and rejuvenating the company.
Like many, I also admire Steve for how he turned Apple around. The closest that our paths crossed was when one of Apple’s VPs of the John Scully era became president of Ashtech, and did to Ashtech what Scully did to Apple. Steve left Apple at the same time I left Ashtech.
And now it is my turn: I have been waiting for this chance for the past seven years!
Now we introduce TRIUMPH Chip, half a dozen state-of-the-art unique OEM boards, TRIUMPH-1, TRIUMPH-4X (and Cluster RTK), six antenna types, (one integrated with IMU and one with triple frequency GPS and dual frequency Galileo), Giodis, Justin, Tracy, Victor, etc. In short: TRIUMPH technology for all precision applications and one year free Galileo! We tracked Chinese Compass/Beidou in September of 2007 but we do not have any decision on releasing any product until we hear more about its plan and schedules. We’ve provided technical details regarding TRIUMPH Technology in this website, and we’ll have more details later here and in other publications. Several patents are pending on our TRIUMPH Technology which we will also disclose when appropriate.
As we promised earlier, we introduced our products in February 1st along with pricing information. You can experience our bundle pricing and discount structures by clicking product prices. You can select different options and see how quickly you will reach the 75% discount level on options. One advantage of this open pricing policy is that you will get the same exact low prices anywhere in the world (excluding shipping, customs, etc).
A straightforward word about Triumph pricing: it is true that the boards that we sold with price tags of more than $5,000 did not cost us more than $500 to manufacture. But manufacturing is only a small part of the entire process. The pricing reflects the huge overhead in engineering and developing technology, in addition to the fact that the GNSS precision market size is far less than other markets like cell phones or MP3 players. For example, it cost several million dollars just to develop the TRIUMPH Chip. When you pay several hundred dollars for a Microsoft product or more than twenty thousand dollars for a design software package, it is no secret that the cost of manufacturing the CD is less than ten dollars. That being said, and considering all other cost structures, it is our technology innovation which enables us to offer TRIUMPH Technology at TRIUMPH Prices.
We plan to accept orders on March and ship by April 2008. Meanwhile, please study our product features and compare with what is available in the market. We love to hear from you.
Along with TRIUMPH Technology comes TRIUMPH Support. Because of our reputation, for the past seven years we have received many requests to support the products of other companies. In addition to our highly-talented local support we are also enhancing our web-based support. Previously, we were providing support and answering technical questions in less than 48 working hours. Now we have re-structured our organization to provide support in less than 24 working hours. In addition to myself, a team of 50 engineers and technical staff monitor all support issues. We do this not only to provide support to our customers but to learn about issues and improve our products. The average GPS/GLONASS experience of the members of our team is more than 20 years. In addition, our team has designed 7 generations of GNSS technology. Compare this with any other company in the world.
TRIUMPH Technology is not just about our hardware. You can soon see for yourself by downloading demo versions of Giodis (our geodetic software), Justin (our GIS and survey software), and Tracy (our field software which runs on our new Victor handheld).
I like to take this opportunity to thank hundreds of you who wrote me encouraging e-mails. I have received close to one hundred e-mails from those of you who wanted to support our products worldwide. I did not have chance to reply to you all. I will reply soon and we will be working together. I would also like to reply and confirm that we welcome those dealers who support other manufacturers’ products. We love to see all of you demonstrate our products next to others so customers could readily compare and decide.
As a final note, a little background on the name "TRIUMPH": there are seven major structures in Moscow from the Stalin era. They are called the seven "vysotkas" and include Moscow State University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the year 2000, the City of Moscow approved a competition to build a larger and more modern version of those structures and dedicate it to the victorious memories of Russian heroes. It was given the name "Triumph Palace." We have purchased and located our Moscow research center in this building and thought it appropriate to name our technology after the building where our innovations were conceived, and to dedicate it to our victorious engineers who worked so hard to make this happen.