Garmin drops Outlook and Delays Nuvifone - Stock Hurt
Garmin announced today that they needed to lower their outlook for the rest of the year on sales and earnings, while also announcing that they are delaying their much touted Nuvifone. For me the Nuvifone represented their move into the connected device market; maybe they will still jump into that market with a Nuvi 900 series or something. They remain the only major manufacturer without an overt and major announcement on a connected GPS navigator.
The revenue outlook really killed them today as they announced an expected $3.9 billion in revenue, down from $4.5 billion that they previously talked about. Apparently, teh Nuvifone only accounted for about $100 million of that drop; the rest is just hard times for the economy slowing down the sales.
Their stock was down 22% today to $35.19, a long way off the 52-week high of $125.
Well, it didn't take long to hear more news on a true navigation package coming to the new iPhone 3G after it's well publicized launch this past week. It seems that TeleNav is working on a new application for the iPhone that will give true Navigator functionality with turn-by-turn directions, visual cues and traffic alerts on the new faster iPhone with a true GPS chip.
The GPS-like applications currently in the iTunes Apps Store are no true navigation applications and the Google Maps interface on the iPhone is better at showing you what to do while walking and not driving down the road at 50 MPH.
Apisphere & Traffic Cast Team Up - Location Aware Future
Apisphere and Traffic Cast teamed up to continue to grow a robust offering of location aware living that will no doubt start to shape how we look at navigation and the role it plays in our lives.
Data/Environmental Awareness - Traffic is not the only thing to consider when we need to get somewhere, but it's the easy one to understand. Got to get to the airport, traffic is slow, leave early; easy to understand. Traffic Cast will be providing this pretty big component in this deal.
What about the fact that what you really need to get on the 5:15PM flight back home? There are a lot of things that impact that; traffic, time needed to return the rental car, the normal security line length, as well as the fact that your airplane is coming from Atlanta and they have thunderstorms going on there right now; your inbound plane is already 30 minutes late; delaying your flight..... All of this needs to be projected into the future. I don't want to keep checking this information for data right now; I need to know what time I need to leave the meeting this afternoon to hit the airport.
So, unless you were under a rock yesterday, you probably heard that the iPhone 3G finally came out and is coming out with a real GPS chip inside. No more fake triangulation junk from cell towers to approximate where you are. The interesting development is that with the developers pack, GPS software makers are jumping on board too.
TomTom said yesterday that they are already running software, "Our navigation system runs on the iPhone already," said a TomTom spokesman, according to Reuters. No word on availability. This may come as a surprise to some folks, but it shouldn't be knowing that TomTom does a decent little business on the side for PDA navigation. Repurpose the code, and go. My guess is that for $149, you'll be up and running.
There are also other rumors that has the Dash navigation software loaded onto the iPhone too, which would put a very connected experience into the hands of iPhone users. The advanced traffic capabilities would be a plus.
Car Mount? - Oh, yes, you will need a car mount, but they are already on the market.
A concern is the power supply, and the loudness of the verbal directions - the speaker phone is hardly loud enough to cover road noise, but the Bluetooth earphone might just be a great way to hear those turn by turn directions.
Can't wait to try this out... gonna have to upgrade.
The folks over at CellFanatic have posted some news about the upcoming iPhone software release that will allow the iPhone to geotag photos taken with its camera. So the whole thing relies on the not-so-good GPS wanna be triangulation capabilities that the original iPhone has. By triangulating or just dead reckoning using cell and wifi signals it can offer a guess as to where you are. In my experience, my iPhone has me in a radius of about half of downtown Boston which is a pretty big swath of area.
The new iPhone which is supposed to be announced in June, should have a true GPS, eliminating the current patch job of location based information.
CellFanatic says...
"While the iPhone lacks the dedicated GPS receiver most of us desire, it still does an adequate job of positioning through cell towers and this capability has now been passed on to the Camera application which presents the user with a pop up window stating, "Camera would like to use your current location". By selecting OK at the prompt, the location data will be pulled from the Maps Application and 'use your current location' in order to deliver the appropriate tags to identify the location the photo was taken. "
Garmin announced a pretty good move today offering Garmin Mobile to the Blackberry crowd for a $99 lifetime fee. The deal offers Garmin maps and a Garmin interface streamed over the network for your GPS enabled Blackberry. Turn by Turn directions will get you there.... all while giving you gas prices, weather and traffic.
Very much targeted at the traveling business type, the unit should be pretty popular with road warriors, or the growing legion of consumers who are heading out to their kid's games on the weekend tapping away to friends.
The $99 lifetime fee is a new move from the usual monthly fee or daily/one time use fees on a lot of other navigation plans.
After the Nuvifone, and launches like this, clearly Garmin has figured that they need to be a part of the mobile phone navigation market.
Nokia is a powerhouse of a mobile phone maker, and with the move to acquire map maker NAVTEQ, they set in motion the wheels to make sure that they are a key player in location based services, and navigation. According to a recent interview, Michael Halbherr, the head of Nokia's location based activities, said that they are set to hit their goal of having half of their handsets GPS enabled by 2010-2012.
I have no idea if that means the death of the GPS stand alone device or not, but I am leaning more and more towards not these days. When GPS units cost $400 for an entry model, I could see the attraction of a small screen, phone based navigator that was essentially free (already had the phone and an extra $10 a month is pretty cheap).
With the drop in GPS prices, entry level units are going to be under $100 and that's not even a splurge item for many folks. Unless the connectedness of the mobile phone can offer a significantly better user experience, I think that the spread of mobile phone GPS will only spur demand for a better and not too expensive stand alone GPS device.
Engadget had this story yesterday on Garmin testing Nuvifone ideas and potentially price points. Typically this type of concept testing is done far in advance by the maker of the product to test out features and designs, and yes price points. At this stage in the game, this concept is probably checking out the appeal of the carrier, the wireless features and the price point of the phone.
The $500 price tag is not so outrageous now, but Apple, who is rumored to be putting real GPS capability into the next generation of the iPhone, is also working with AT&T. Now a recent BusinessWeek article speculated about AT&T dropping the price on the iPhone as a way to spur on demand in this sluggish economy. That $500 price point for the Nuvifone all of a sudden would be pretty expensive in comparison.
AT&T has announced that they are rolling out AT&T Navigator, a service that uses speech recognition to drive the navigation software offering. Working with TelNav, AT&T is offering turn by turn voice prompted navigation with speech recognition for address and point of interest entry. The AT&T navigator service also offers some advanced features like traffic flow and incident data as well as gas pricing. Finally, the service offers an integration with the internet that has you entering addresses online and sending them to your phone for advanced planning.
Standard type pricing - $9.99 per month or $2.99 per day.
Garmin also announced a bunch of mobile news as they build out their mobile phone navigation capabilities. They are putting new features into their Blackberry presence with server hosted navigation that includes realtime traffic and gas prices, on top of the turn by turn navigation that has the familiar Garmin interface. Their dead simple interface asks "Where to?" or offers you to "View Map" - the two basic needs when you turn to a navigation device. The Deal on the BlackBerry devices is for Centennial based units who will make available via download a free, seven-day trial subscription of Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry on new and existing Centennial BlackBerry 8310 Smartphones.
Also available is the Garmin Mobile interface and navigation for Samsung phones where an SD card carries the software- pop it in and start navigating.
There have been some rumors floating around about an iPhone GPS module and sure enough there is something coming from Nav n Go (the folks who have made the iGo software for the Mio up until now), using an adapter from Gomite called the LocoGPS. The LocoGPS adapter will plug into the bottom of the iPhone or iPod Touch to serve up the GPS software interface over WiFi and the GPS signals.
Sound like a lot? Yea, I thought so too. It seems that they are not yet OK'd by Apple, so they have to go to these lengths to transmit the GPS software over WiFi waves and hope that things get better in the future. You may still have to hack the phone to get things working - ouch!
Pricing is undecided and may be available this Spring.
Stumbled across this site last weekend and thought I would pass along.... A site that allows you to download an application to your GPS and Java enabled Mobile Phone, capture your tracks and then display them online. Very cool. There is also the opportunity to track in realtime, making it a cool way to experience a race or outing.
The site also allows you to check out some of the past tracks that people have uploaded and made public. The interface is a little slow as it processes the data, but it is cool to see the stats on tracks that were published. The interface is easy to understand and is an impressive 3-D Topo type map that has the track information superimposed on it. See Below.
A PBX business phone company, Nuvio, is suing Garmin over the Nuvifone name trying to prevent them from using the name to launch the navigational mobile phone later this year under the Nuvifone name. On top of that, they are also seeking damages and trying to prevent Garmin from selling Nuvi GPS units!!!! I guess while you've got the lawyers at the table, you might as well go for the gusto with that one.
The Hype machine has started, and I'll admit I will give it a few turns of the crank before it's done. I mean hey, it's not often that the little old GPS gets out and walks around the technology block to go and grab the cool trophy for a new phone design.
It looks like Garmin is partnering with Google for internet search; good move. Makes me wonder if they are starting to line themselves up for Google search on a connected GPS? If you want to see, checkout Garmin's online images with screenshots of what the Nuvifone might look like.
Anyway, here's Garmin's take on their evolution.... Nuvi to Nuvifone. The second one is about some of the Nuvifone capabilities. Pretty good; worth a look:
Garmin drops Outlook and Delays Nuvifone - Stock Hurt
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