Research In Motion on Thursday said it has agreed to acquire Dash Navigation, a maker of maps for GPS devices.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In 2005, Dash Navigation entered the GPS market with a mapping device, the Dash Express, after it quit producing the hardware and began focusing on software.
The Mountain View, California, GPS startup raised a total of $70 million before the Canadian maker of BlackBerry smartphones made the acquisition offer. Crescendo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Sequoia Capital were among the investors.
The move, pairing a phone maker and map startup, is a familiar one. In 2008, Finnish phone giant Nokia acquired digital map maker Navteq to boost its location-based services.
BlackBerry phones so far don't come with their own navigation software but instead rely on Google's maps. The acquisition of Dash might encourage the development of RIM’s own mapping software.