Didn't know Jeppesen did all of those things - learn something new every day. As far was which culture will prevail, from my past experiences the larger company often is the dominant. That is, in a few years you'll essentially be interacting with Jeppesen customer service and product development on all things ForeFlight.
ForeFlight has been working with Jepp for a long time. Their existing relationship with Jepp was the reason that Boeing ended up purchasing ForeFlight.
Also, Jepp at least seems to know what they don't know. Their EFB product was pretty bad, as I understand it, until they got ForeFlight to revamp it.
IMO FF cannot raise their price significantly without losing market share. On the high end, they do not offer any more capability than Garmin Pilot, and GP has a significant advantage with hardware tie-in.
Disagree. You're coming at this from the small GA perspective. The growth areas they're already playing in are military and 135, and if they can make some inroads in 121 that's a huge growth area.
They already own the small GA market. Thoma Bravo did not buy ForeFlight to sell to you and me.
Now, ForeFlight already offers a LOT more capability than Garmin Pilot when it comes to crewed operations via ForeFlight Dispatch. I would expect Thoma Bravo to flesh that out further by purchasing one of the scheduling/maintenance products like FlightDocs and putting them together. It shouldn't be too difficult, as ForeFlight already has an API and can integrate with several schedulers.
The good news is, that focus won't negatively affect the small GA market. I would expect that from our perspective, the trajectory will be largely the same.
They also deliberately limit their market by only supporting iOS.
Not at all. It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, but among pilots, far more own an iPad than an Android tablet, largely because ForeFlight only works on the iPad and Garmin Pilot is better on the iPad than on Android. If ForeFlight had an Android version, they wouldn't get a bunch of new customers, they'd just get customers that currently have an iPad and would rather have an Android. So, they'd have to make a MASSIVE investment, but they'd still have largely the same customer base. It makes zero business sense to do an Android version unless and until those conditions change.
I would expect the prices to increase. PE will invest for a 4-6yr period with a goal to grow the asset via organic and acquisitional means then sell it at a profit. I would not think that acquisition of other EFB's would make a significant contribution to growth (of course, assuming the could not acquire Garmin Pilot) so that growth will have to come from improving operating efficiency, increased sales and/or increased prices. The low hanging fruit is increased pricing. It may prove a boon to Garmin if price increases drive more users to GP, and then Garmin can increase the price of GP....
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Thoma Bravo's MO is strategic acquisitions to drive growth. Like I said, I think they're going to purchase some developers of other aviation products that aren't EFBs, and use those assets to get further into the 135 and military markets and to make a push into 121.
isagree. You're coming at this from the small GA perspective. The growth areas they're already playing in are military and 135, and if they can make some inroads in 121 that's a huge growth area.….