Forecast: Good Deals on GPS Units
Don't know if you happen to watch the stock markets, but Wednesday, Garmin had a rocky day as an Analyst downgraded their stock. At one point the Garmin stock was trading below $68 after closing the previous day around $80. Might not matter if you don't own their stock, but the reason for the downgrade is significant to all consumers.
Apparently this analyst was making their rounds at the CES 2008 show and in talking to the different companies, they got the feeling that TomTom was going to be aggressive in their pricing and markdowns this year to acquire market share, more so than Garmin. I am not going to get into a debate about the semantics of who will be more aggressive, but the bottom line is that the GPS market is getting more competitive, more brands are hitting the marketplace trying to differentiate themselves versus some strong competition, and setting a lower price is a way to get noticed.
Black Friday 2006 - Mio gets the Mio C310X offered at the then unheard of price of $149; exploding onto the US market as a result.
Black Friday 2007 - Navigon gets the Navigon 2100t offered for $99 with lifetime traffic; result is that they are claiming to be the fastest growing GPS brand in the US. Also, more directly to this issue, TomTom gets the TomTom ONE offered for $149 everywhere and less in some places; result is that demand outstrips supply - I understand that Amazon is still fulfilling orders from December.
Pretty safe bet that the prices will continue to spiral down, and that fierce competition ahead will keep the bottom end of the market very volatile - in other words, better prices for me and you.
Read More in: CES 2008 | Garmin GPS News | Mio GPS News | TomTom GPS News
Share this Article with others:
Related Articles:
Came straight to this page? Visit GPS Lodge for all the latest news.
Posted by Scott Martin at January 11, 2008 6:43 AM
Garmin needs to realize that no one is going to buy a $999 GPS (i.e. their new high end), when there are other units out there that offer just as many features for almost half the price.
********************
Agree those $1000 price points are tough. One can only hope that they stay there for no more than a couple of months. Not sure where the new Magellan 5340 + GPRS will land, but their $1000+ price then a monthly sub on top of that is pretty steep; the $599 Dash looks pretty compelling.
-Scott
Mailing List
Subscribe - RSS
