Eulogy for a failed innovator
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  16 years
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Eulogy for a failed innovator
So here's the story. This company practically owned its product space. Then other companies started eating into its market share, making strategic acquisitions to improve the quality of their own products. Doubts began to surface about the company's moat. Innovative new competing products promised similar functionality coupled with applications the company couldn't offer. It promised to roll out a killer product that would marry the best of its technology with the new competition, and when the product was finally released, it was a huge disappointment. The company's stock price never recovered, and annual revenues dropped each year from 2008 to 2010.
The story I just told is about Garmin (Nasdaq: GRMN ) . Just plug these items into the story: TomTom outbidding Garmin for Tele Atlas and producing an iPhone navigation app; Verizon launching the VZ Navigator service on a phone platform that also supports music, text, email, and video; and Garmin's Nuvifone flop. All of that happened before the first Android became a dominant operating system offering free navigation features.
Complete article at: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/05/20/rip-rimm.as...
Garmin is more than a maker of PND
Personal Navigation Devices in the Automotive sector.... if the scaled that back drastically, they's still have aviation & marine sectors where they are still innovating. They really should work on their iPhone app - and make an iPad app, and Android as well to keep in the game.
*Keith* MacBook Pro *wifi iPad(2012) w/BadElf GPS & iPhone6 + Navigon*
It's amazing how quickly
It's amazing how quickly technology changes in a few years.
I can remember in 2006 being so amazed with my new Motorola RAZR.
5 years later and I consider that to be a disposable piece of junk.
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/21626 - red light cameras do not work
their gps also going downhill
their gps also going downhill
aviatin market still strong
they still have a strong presence in the aviation market, delivering solid value. I'd bet the profit margins are better in that market as well.
Nuvi 2460, 680, DATUM Tymserve 2100, Trimble Thunderbolt, Ham radio, Macintosh, Linux, Windows
Couldn't agree more!
Garmin had it too good for too long and they were quite content to rest on their laurels. I've been using Garmin for 15+ years, but my new Droid blows anything Garmin has out of the water in terms of pricing, features, and speed of innovation.
If they don't come out with an iphone/Droid app soon, they will be doomed to specialty markets like aviation and marine......
NP
In times of profound change, the learners will inherit the earth while the "learned" find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists...
http://www8.garmin.com/apps/
http://www8.garmin.com/apps/
They've had one for the iCrap for a while. But for some inexplicable reason its maps are downloaded from a server instead of being stored on a memory card.
They don't have an equivalent Android app, and they quite bluntly could have made one pretty damn quickly just by doing a slight rewrite of the app in the nüvifones to recognize GPS chipsets other than those in the phones.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." --Douglas Adams
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I do find it interesting why Garmin hasn't chosen to appeal to a loyal fan base for mobiles. However, Android is fragmented with the various releases, and as for the iPhone, who knows.
Perhaps we would all like to over-simplify the challenges to write the code for various Os's.
nüvi 3790T | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable ~ JFK
There are people who have
There are people who have already torn apart the nüvifone firmware to find out what it would take to get the navigation working on non-nüvifones. The end consensus was that it would be very difficult to do because there is no support for other GPS chipsets within the software. Garmin could have repackaged the navigation portions of the nüvifone along with a universal GPS chipset driver and made something that would appeal to the Android users who would like to have something as polished as what Garmin produces.
Instead of releasing an app for Android, they would rather cede the space to Copilot, IGo, and the other alternatives that exist for Android.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." --Douglas Adams