Zebra Technologies (www.zebra.com), the leading company in the bar code printer market, is broadening its business by acquiring Navis Holdings (www.navis.com) and the German company Proveo.

The purchases follow Zebra's January acquisition of WhereNet, a company that provides active RFID tags and other hardware for real time location systems.

Navis is a supplier of software systems for dock and yard management, cargo and container tracking, and mobile asset management.

Proveo uses GPS and other technologies to track ground support vehicles at airports. (Zebra executives say they plan to expand the use of Proveo's technology into manufacturing and distribution environments.)

“Zebra is trying to break the mold. They don't want to be a printing company; they want to be a tracking company,” says Andrew Nathanson of research firm Venture Development Corp. And considering the many electronic technologies that are now competing with paper bar codes, he adds, it's wise of Zebra's management to expand their business beyond bar code printers.

“Proveo adds GPS tracking technology to complete the continuum of data acquisition technologies for Zebra,” says Zebra CEO Anders Gustafsson. “This range now extends from bar codes and passive RFID for item, case and pallet tracking; to active RFID and WiFi for closed-loop, real time location systems; and finally to GPS for the movement of vehicles over a wide area.”

Company executives say Zebra plans to integrate WhereNet, Navis and Proveo into a single business unit and to use Navis's large, global customer base to expand the market for Zebra's other technologies.