TeleNav Dreams Of GPS Navigation On Every Phone, But Must Contend With Google [Video]

Sal Dhanani, one of the co-founders of mobile GPS navigation company TeleNav , wants to "bring GPS navigation to the masses through mobile phones." His company has been pursuing that dream since 1999 when TeleNav was founded. Today, TeleNav is bundled into millions of Sprint phones, and is also available through AT&T (including as an iPhone app ) and other carriers. The company just went public in May, it has 900 employees, and its revenues last quarter were $45 million (with healthy net profits of $12.5 million). TeleNav is riding a trend of personal navigation devices becoming cheaper and cheaper, and, in fact, doing away with the standalone devices altogether by bundling the software into more than 500 different types of cell phones. It charges for its apps, and even after splitting revenues with the carriers, its revenues have grown at a 107 percent compound annual growth rate over the last three years. Everything finally seems to be clicking for TeleNav, especially as touchscreen smartphones take over. There is only one problem. As cheap as TeleNav's GPS navigation service is compared to more expensive devices, it still has to increasingly compete with free.