
As everyone knows, Garmin and TomTom have their backs against the ropes in a fight to remain relevant in an age of free GPS turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones (thanks
Google and
Nokia). While dedicated personal navigators are almost always superior to their converged competition, the gap has certainly narrowed such that it's become difficult to justify another device when an
increasing number of people already carry a fine navigation device in their pockets. But that's just gut instinct talking, where's the hard evidence? Certainly not
speculative stock prices. A good place to start is in forward-looking financial statements like the one Garmin, the leading navigation device maker in the US, just issued. Gamin says that it expects competition to cause prices to decline by about 10% in the personal navigation device (PND) industry putting pressure on margins, and thus profits, in 2010. It also sees flat or slightly declining revenue over the same period. Fortunately for Garmin, it has a diversified product offering that includes the Nuvifone. However, Garmin admits to being disappointed by sales of the handset that "won" our Editor's Choice award for
Worst Gadget of the Year.
Things aren't all doom and gloom, though. Garmin has a pair of Nuvifones in the chute including the
Android-powered A50. And its Q4 results of $1.43 per share easily beat analyst expectations of 95 cents a share. Even TomTom surprised many last week with a 1% increase in Q4 revenue and net profit of €75 million compared to a €989 million loss a year ago. So there's some hope left for the dedicated PND market... but not much.
Filed under: Cellphones, GPS
Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Mio S400
Mio has a brand new GPS navigation system out in Korea called Mio S400. Mio S400 is a dual purpose sat nav device that can be both used inside a vehicle or on a bike/motorcycle.
It will come out tomorrow in Korea to be exact and will be sold for 139000 KRW ($122). The device measures only 18mm in thickness, weighs 147.5 grams. The battery is good for about 2.5 hours and it looks like it won the iF Design Award China with its stylish black/silver frame.
Some other specs include the 20 channel GPS receiver, Windows CE 5.8 which allows for watching of movies or playing games as well as the more important office viewer. It can also accept external memory cards up to 16GB.
Will it come to this side of the world we don’t know yet… via
Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.
Mio S400