Ituran was established in 1994 by the Tadiran conglomerate to develop and operate a
service for locating stolen vehicles using a
telematics technology that was originally developed for military use at Tadiran Telematics, a subsidiary of Tadiran Communications. The technology involved transmitting
location and status data from the vehicle to a control center. In 1995 Tadiran decided to sell the Ituran concept to a group of investors for US$250,000. In 1998, the company had an
initial public offering on the
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, raising the capital required to develop the service overseas in the United States,
Brazil and
Argentina. In November 1999,
Ituran acquired Tadiran Telematics, which continued to manufacture the
tracking devices and components of the
vehicle tracking system Ituran was using for its services, for $10 million. The acquisition enabled Ituran to reduce the cost of the systems it sold. Ituran changed the company's name to Telematics Wireless. In 2004, Telematics Wireless won contracts to install and deploy
vehicle tracking systems in
Korea and China, for local companies developing a service similar to Ituran's. In 2005,
Ituran raised approximately $50 million in an initial public offering on Nasdaq, which gave the company a value of $294 million. In November 2007,
Ituran sold Telematics Wireless to
Singapore based ST Electronics, part of the
ST Engineering corporation, for $90 million. ==References==