Magellan Adeneo

Global Manufacturer Ensures Low-Cost Development for Global Positioning Devices

Business Situation

Magellan Professional planned to create a family of new, rugged handheld devices for the industrial andprofessional geographic information systems (GIS) markets that required mobile global positioning solutions.Theorganisation needed a cost-effective, easy-to-develop operating system to rapidly build a family of new, ruggedhandheld devices that delivered mobile global positioning system (GPS) solutions.

Magellan Professional, headquartered in the United States, develops and manufactures global positioning devices.The organisation’s management wanted to launch a new family of handheld products. It needed to deliver a richuser interface with personal digital assistant (PDA)-style functionality and a cost-effective development environment.For the new product line, Magellan Professional selected Microsoft� Windows� CE .NET 4.2. As a result, theorganisation ensured the rapid development of the MobileMapper CE Global Positioning System (GPS) mobilemapping device. The operating system’s advanced driver support, simple development tools, and rich featuresmeant that Magellan Professional cost effectively completed development and customisation of an engaging userinterface. Furthermore, the device’s development environment is popular among the world’s leading applicationdevelopers such as ESRI in USA and Digiterra in Hungary.

Solution

Magellan Professional selected Microsoft Windows CE .NET 4.2 as the operating system for its new devices, whichinclude the GPS mobile mapping solution called MobileMapper CE. For Magellan Professional, the business valueof using Windows CE was clear because the solution came with the following:

• A rich UI with advanced integration to support Bluetooth and wireless technology, and advanced applications, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows Media� Player.
• A robust ecosystem of Microsoft partners to help build intelligent and reliable mobile devices.
• Development toolsets that mean: manufacturers can cost effectively and quickly build, debug, and deploy Windows CE-based applications.

Benefits

• Rapid time to market for products
• Lower development costs from built-in features
• Advanced stability of operating system
• Extensive consumer experience with user interface
• Attractive to third-party application developers

Thanks to Adeneo’s global competence in board support package (BSP) anddriver design, Magellan Professional signed a contract with the partnerto develop the processor’s hardware and software environments. MagellanProfessional was sure Adeneo’s expertise around Atmel processors andWindows CE systems would ensure that the key milestones of the project werereached successfully.

Adeneo had to design a hardware development board and provide thecomplete Windows CE board support package within six months. This gavedevelopers at Magellan Professional nine months to work concurrently andcomplete the necessary product design and customisation for MobileMapperCE’s UI prior to the planned launch date.

Pedersen recalls: �The Adeneo team was incredibly supportive and flexible.It delivered the development board and BSP on time and offered an advancedlevel of expertise to assist us during the final design and customisation stages.�

�Magellan Professional made a good choice in WindowsCE. It combines the robustness of a strong embeddedoperating system with ergonomic development tools andrich features, and helps deliver the most advanced mobiletechnology on the market.�Yannick Chammings, Windows Embedded Group Manager at Adeneo