Qualcomm’s Snaptracs—Not SnapTrack—Offers New Pet Tracking Technology to Consumers

San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) has focused most of its business and resources on commercial customers who install the company’s wireless chips and related technologies in a host of cell phones, mobile devices, networking equipment, and other products. But today, a year-old Qualcomm subsidiary called Snaptracs is unveiling a new product for consumers—a lightweight tracking device called Tagg that attaches to a pet’s collar and helps pet owners track down their lost pets.

Snaptracs says its Tagg system uses advanced global positioning systems (GPS) technology to track the device, which is attached to the pet’s collar. If a pet strays out of a zone designated by its owner, the automated system sends an alert via text messaging and e-mail to the pet’s owner. Owners can then determine their pet’s location by using online mapping technology.

The system also can send text messages with the nearest street address to the animal’s location, so you can still locate your pet with a conventional feature phone. Snaptracs even included a trip button, which allows the pet’s owner to take the animal out of its designated zone (for example, for walks or car rides) without triggering an alert.

In its statement today, Qualcomm says hundreds of thousands of pets go missing every year, yet only 15 to 20 percent of lost dogs and only about two out of every 100 lost cats are ever returned to their owners, according to the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy.

One downside to the gadget is its short battery life. Snaptracs says the battery “can last up to 30 days” depending on usage. Still, pet owners embraced the Tagg concept so enthusiastically in marketing studies that Qualcomm decided to offer the product directly to consumers, according to Snaptracs president David Vigil. “We just wanted to get this out to consumers as fast as possible,” he says.

The Snaptracs president tells me the new subsidiary chose its name partly to echo Omnitracs, Qualcomm’s satellite-based locating and messaging service still used by long-haul trucking companies. But Vigil says Snaptracs is not to be confused with SnapTrack, a Bay Area leader in GPS technologies that Qualcomm acquired 11 years ago in a $1 billion deal. It’s an easy mistake to make, though. SnapTrack still operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm and continues to focus on business-to-business wireless GPS technologies.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.