On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:16:21 -0800 (PST), "Ed M."
wrote:

"Analysts concluded last year after Google's foray into navigation
that it was unlikely TomTom, Garmin and Nokia would ever recoup their
big recent investments in navigation technology."



Garmin seems well positioned

Tomtom and Nokia are the ones that spent billions on purchasing
mapping companies

On 22 Gen, 23:34, Burnie M wrote:
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:16:21 -0800 (PST), "Ed M."
wrote:



"Analysts concluded last year after Google's foray into navigation
that it was unlikely TomTom, Garmin and Nokia would ever recoup their
big recent investments in navigation technology."

Garmin seems well positioned

Why?
Garmin sells navigation systems that are now free from Google and
Nokia
(ok, they are not the same: Google and Nokia are on the smartphone
business, not really "navigators")

Tomtom and Nokia are the ones that spent billions on purchasing
mapping companies

But Nokia is going to use them and giving them for free to gain market
share in (smart)phone selling
while tomtom can only loose market share in the navigation market: if
you buy a smartphone with free navigation, are going to buy a TomTom
nav?

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:30:06 -0800 (PST), claudegps
wrote:

Garmin seems well positioned

Why?
Garmin sells navigation systems that are now free from Google and
Nokia
(ok, they are not the same: Google and Nokia are on the smartphone
business, not really "navigators")

Tomtom and Nokia are the ones that spent billions on purchasing
mapping companies

But Nokia is going to use them and giving them for free to gain market
share in (smart)phone selling
while tomtom can only loose market share in the navigation market: if
you buy a smartphone with free navigation, are going to buy a TomTom
nav?


I have a Nokia E52 with the free mapping/routing

This product is significantly less than even the cheapest Garmin

Map screen readability is poor
Address entry is slow and tedious
Volume is way too low
No text to speech
No speed cameras

Multifunction units do a lot of things poorly, nothing well. Garmin is in
far more than cheap consumer GPS units.

"Burnie M" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:30:06 -0800 (PST), claudegps
wrote:

Garmin seems well positioned

Why?
Garmin sells navigation systems that are now free from Google and
Nokia
(ok, they are not the same: Google and Nokia are on the smartphone
business, not really "navigators")

Tomtom and Nokia are the ones that spent billions on purchasing
mapping companies

But Nokia is going to use them and giving them for free to gain market
share in (smart)phone selling
while tomtom can only loose market share in the navigation market: if
you buy a smartphone with free navigation, are going to buy a TomTom
nav?


I have a Nokia E52 with the free mapping/routing

This product is significantly less than even the cheapest Garmin

Map screen readability is poor
Address entry is slow and tedious
Volume is way too low
No text to speech
No speed cameras


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

claudegps writes:
But Nokia is going to use them and giving them for free to gain market
share in (smart)phone selling while tomtom can only loose market share
in the navigation market: if you buy a smartphone with free
navigation, are going to buy a TomTom nav?

I agree, some people might buy both and have redundancy, but many people
won't so their market share can only go down.

One thing smart phones don't do so well yet and this impacts their use
as GPS devices is sharing the screen and CPU. Using my Google G1 for
navigation effectively leaves me with no phone. I don't like talking on
the phone while driving anyway, but when using googlenavigation on a
tricky set of turns, one has no choice but to let the calls go to
voicemail. Accepting the call would cause the screen and voice
navigation to switch off for the duration of the call. That isn't going
to work if someone expects full time navigation aid. Clearly this isn't
an insoluble problem, just saying it hasn't been solved yet.

-wolfgang
--
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht
If the airwaves belong to the public why does the public only get 3
non-overlapping WIFI channels?

"TheDuck" writes:
Multifunction units do a lot of things poorly, nothing well. Garmin is
in far more than cheap consumer GPS units.

While I agree that multifunction units usually don't integrate all the
functions together very well, I'd disagree vehemently that everything is
worse. The quality of the routing, the amount of location information
at my fingertips (such as routing to stores and restaurants), as well as
the freshness of the data is much, much better on my Google G1 than on
my Garmin GPSMAP 60CSX. The Garmin does have a much better GPS rf unit
and has a more sunlight readable screen, but the Google G1 excels in
just about everything else.

The thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that the routing
database for the Garmin GPS's is effectively unmaintained. Even after
you've bought their expensive routing database, they don't give you free
daily/weekly/monthly updates to keep the data fresh. They pretty much
throw the product over the wall and abandon you unless you are willing
to pay some large chunk of money to upgrade to the newer version. Even
then the granularity of the updates is far from stellar. It is a year
or more between updates.

-wolfgang
--
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht
If the airwaves belong to the public why does the public only get 3
non-overlapping WIFI channels?