What Garmin is trying to do by offering the Mobile XT hardware/software combination is along the lines of what Nokia is aspiring to do-namely, incorporate the convenience of navigation services into a single device that most everyone carries. The acquisition by Nokia demonstrates the appeal and strategic importance of offering location-based services. It takes advantage of phones connected to the Web by routing to the location of a contact in the phone's address book or to a calendar appointment and can broadcast your location to any other phone or pinpoint the whereabouts of other Garmin Mobile XT users.Īll of this map data is provided by Navteq, which was enticed into joining Nokia's ranks Monday in exchange for $8.1 billion. Mobile XT comes loaded with maps of the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico or Europe. And, of course, you don't need to ferry around a separate navigation device. The card is $99, a steal compared with the average Garmin device, which will run you anywhere from $200 to $1,000.
Embedded on a microSD card, the software gives the handset access to a slew of location-based services, such as maps, driving directions, real-time traffic and weather information, local gas prices and friend-finding tools. The GPS device maker announced Wednesday GPS software called Garmin Mobile XT. So they don't need to make things easy to use in order to keep customers.Garmin has a really small idea for making smart phones a whole lot smarter. There's not a lot of capable competition out there. So they drag GCM (and the whole Connect universe) into Expore-land. But that's a big project and Garmin Connect Mobile can already do that. The long range plan might call for the Explore app to be able to "pair" with a wide range of devices all by itself. (Can you say "collections"?) I also think they take shortcuts at the expense of usability. They have a tendency to overcomplicate things for reasons which users like us cannot understand.
Or maybe there is some grand plan that is moving along at a glacial pace. Any commonality or integration across segments is an afterthought. Individual industry segments (iR, non-iR handhelds, automotive products, wearables, etc.) each go their own way. Pretty sure that everybody EXCEPT Garmin agrees with that sentiment! I think there is no central, high-level direction.
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