Garmin stock plummeting recently

But what stock hasn't?

http://moneycentral.msn.com/articles/invest/jubak/fifty.asp

By comparison, Garmin lost more than half of its value in the same time frame.

Yes, but keep in mind that Garmin is a smaller company with a very specific niche market. When the market is down, these types of companies tend to be more volatile that larger companies or ones that are more diverse in the marketplace.

PT

With many new small, medium and big size companies now in the market offering GPS devices with numerous options, it won't be long before names like 'Garmin', 'Magelan', 'TOMTOM' and more will be up against some stiff competition.

GPS devices have been predicted that the prices would drop to all time low prices by many manufactuers as more and more people are swaying into this new gizmo craze.

This is just another electronics device that people love to own and companies everywhere are listening.

The stock took a major hit last week after one industry analyst -- one -- expressed the opinion that TomTom is approaching the US market more aggressively than Garmin is.

See Kansas City Star story at http://www.kansascity.com/business/companies/story/437975.ht...

Garmin has been slow to react to its competition. It's a shame.

I think it is very simple - major competition, new and better models from other companies with competitive prices, and it seems to be getting easier (price of entry) to go into this line of business. This week's Wall Street Journal had a great article of the GPS technology and where it thinks it is going.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120027487946287479.html

The first Raytheon commercial microwave oven was marketed in 1954. In 1967, Amana, a division of Raytheon, introduced its domestic Radarange microwave oven. They owned the market. It did not take long for all the appliance manufacuturers to get in the game. Now you can pick them up at Wal Mart for $60.

I beleive the same will happen very rapidly with GPS. In a few short years everyone will be in the game. Garmin, Tom Tom and Magellan whould be worried. The horses are out of the corral. I just heard a report on CNET that that the handheld market is aggressivly working to add GPS to their units. Five years from now you will probabley find GPS capabiliities on numerous cell phones, PDA's and MP3/Video players. Look at the wonderful video screen on the iPhone. How hard would it be to add GPS to the phone and clip it to your dashboard vent?

It's happening everywhere

What happened is in 2007 quarter 4 specifically(holiday season) tom tom lowered prices on their gps units and Garmin in effort to keep their market share had to lower prices and it scared investors thinking with lower prices Garmin would have lower margins and lower profits in 08 which may or may not happen. My personal opinion is that once people use Tom Tom's inferior lower priced products garmin will have no problem producing their better products and have more market pricing power. But anaylsts expect Garmins 4q sales to be strong from 2007 so the stock will rebound.

Lest we forget where GPS started. Collins (now Rockwell-Collins) developed the first GPS and demonstrated it in 1983. This was a huge milestone in aircraft navigation ... 3 feet accuracy! Proud to say I worked there for 34 years.

The black bar on the left of this link may be interesting reading:
http://www.rockwellcollins.com/content/pdf/pdf_1043.pdf

RT

Everything in my portfolio is down! Not even one shining star. Now's when it gets hard to hold out for a better market climate.

I followed samuelsam's link to the interesting WSJ story on digital maps. The article has a 2-min video demo of the new 3D maps.

Direct link to the video: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452319854/bcti...

Note how the Tele Atlas mapping vans are equipped to capture images of buildings and terrain. I can't imagine what it takes to convert all that data into 3D maps.

With competitor GPS's coming on the market with lots and lots of features, and Garmin now in the habit of removing features and customization options, no wonder their stock is falling. I know I am not returning as a Garmin customer for my next GPS and I am encouraging family and coworkers not to consider Garmin when I am asked my option ... my Nuvi 660 is why.

I truly hope Garmin re-thinks what they are doing. I was always fond of Garmin.

I've come to realize that Garmin is now more for their name and the fact that they have a reputation for so many years that people tend to be drawn towards them. Make no mistake that they still have some very reliable units out there.

However, with so many other companies that have the capabilities and means of creating a GPS that are capable of duplicating as well as surpassing the Garmin model feature set it will make it that much more difficult for them to keep up. I suspect that Garmin will be pulling rabbits out of their hats in the near future to keep up with all the competition out there today.

People can't you see it's a buy opportunity! While many are crying about the decline in stock prices, other are scarfing up the bargains out there (like Garmin).

Specifically who are these companies surpassing what Garmin has and what are these features? lol Tom Tom?lol You obviously have never used Garmin or its competitors Garmin is light years ahead of its competition and once the 800 series nuvi's come out its going to be game over for the competition

If you think for one second that the GPS technology is only in the hands of Garmin, then think again.
I'm not putting down Garmin altogether, I am simply stating that this technology is in the hands of many with endless ideas.

And to answer your question, yes I do currently own 3 GPS units. GARMIN Nuvi(660), TOMTOM (ONE) and LG (LN740).

Which one do I prefer? LG.

The LG LN740 is a good unit but whats real outstanding or groundbreaking about it? Its basically a Garmin 600 series clone. Voice activation is the wave of the future and Garmin is going to be the leader for it for portable GPS units. Also the 5000 looks awesome I just got ahold of one today and screen size wise the best looking GPS unit I've ever seen. Garmin is by far the idustry leader. I'd like to see LG, Tom Tom and whoever put out the quality and quantity of devices Garmin does to give the consumer more of a choice

seriously now, you people do realize that we are in a recession right? stock prices for nearly... well, everything have dropped in the past few months. we are heading towards depression here in the states. people are broke and don't spend money money, so the economy is crap- there's other reasons for this as well. if the economy is crap, it won't matter what the stocks are worth because every other stock is down too.

oh yeah, the Chiefs.... they are horrible. i live in kc, take it from me, len elliot peeing his pants and missing the field goals against the colts nearly 15 years ago were a sign.

How many years has Garmin been producing GPS units?

How many years has LG been producing GPS units?

I agree Garmin is better overall. Any GPS user should or will agree to that. My Garmin overall is a better unit than the LG (but not by that much). So why do I prefer the LG then? I like the layout of it's features, specifially the way the units POI's are organized. If Garmin could do the same I would stick with the Garmin (instead my wife has it). LG's unit comes with TTS, thereby staring at the screen is not that important to me. Things like screen quality, Bluetooth, media players etc. don't quite matter to what I realy need the GPS for....navigation.

I'm sure voice activation as well as numerous other features will be a standard feature in most if not all GPS manufactuers in the very near future.

Also, Garmin primarily targets GPS devices. LG produces practicaly anything and everything. If LG sticks with their guns their future within the GPS field looks very promising.

For the mean time, Garmin still has the upper hand in the game.

And then there was December 25, 1971, the longest NFL game ever played when the great KC player, Eddie Podolak (from Iowa), gained 350 all-purpose yards (8 receptions for 110 yards, 17 carries for 85 yards, 3 kickoff returns for 154 yards) ..... and KC still lost the game to Miami.

What's this got to do with GPS? Maybe Yepremian could have found the goal posts if he had a GPS in his pocket!!

RT

Classic!

I work in a large company and many of us have GPS's ... Garmin and other companies, and the current TomToms are quite nice devices.

My last GPS was a Pioneer Avic D1 (which I believe is not a Garmin) and it worked very well. This was an in-dash GPS, an area of the market Garmin is not a part of.

I haven't owned a TomTom or another portable gps aside from Garmin, as up to recently, they have had my loyalty. But I have played with the others in stores, examined coworkers devices and been in their vehicles and seen those other non-Garmins operate, as well as speak to their owners. All the non Garmin GPS's seem to work quite well and their owners I have spoken to are very happy with them.

I for one don't give a hoot about Garmin's 800 series. Garmin has lost my loyalty and will not be getting any of my money in the future unless they get their heads out of their assets and fix the Nuvi series.

Personally, I think Garmin has started to dig their own grave and if they are not careful, they are going to fall right into it.

Don't get me wrong, my Nuvi 660 is a beautiful piece of hardware, but it is not customizable. Garmin tells you how to use your GPS unit, their way and not your way. Kind of like buying a car and having the dealership tell you they took out reverse because in their opinion, you do not need it:

- I can not mark road avoidances for errors in the map so that I am not constantly routed over bridges that don't exist or construction areas that will be a mess for over a year around where I live (my old Garmin used to be able to do that)
- I can not plan routes on my computer and download them to my Nuvi
- I can not enter multiple waypoints and have the Nuvi sort them in the best route
- I can not display certain waypoints on the screen at all times
- It will not warm me of toll roads on a current route
- I can not choose to display a map scale on the main navigation screen
- I can not choose different information options instead of just speed and direction in the navigation screen
- I think Garmins idea of zooming out to a higher zoom level on the 660 when travelling over a certain speed is a wonderful idea and feature, but I can not set the speed where it should zoom out and its default setting is way too high for the speed limits on Ontario highways.

And of course, the bluetooth keeps dropping the cell phone every few days so it has to be repaired, the audio book player and mp3 player is not usable because the volume is too low, the fm tranmitter is useless as it does not have enough power.

Really, all my Nuvi is good for is showing a map, and it doesn't even do that well as it does not display many street names ... sometimes, not one even one single street name on the entire map screen.