Garmin Android Phone Coming in 2009!
Everyone knows Garmin, the company leading the GPS navigation industry. Most Android fans also know that the GPS applications available on the Android Market are currently limited to ONE application - AndNav2 - which is in Alpha stages and isn't yet available for the United States.
Context & Ripple Effects
Garmin has spent 2008 trying to turn its GPS dominance into a phone business: it unveiled the nuvifone back in January to much fanfare, but by late December the device had slipped with no ship date, prompting questions about what actually happened to Garmin's NuviFone. This report of a possible Android-based Garmin phone in 2009 suggests a pivot — rather than shipping its own proprietary OS, Garmin may ride Google's fast-growing platform, where navigation is conspicuously underserved: AndNav2 remains the only GPS app on the Android Market, stuck in Alpha and unavailable in the US.
First-order effects
- Garmin would enter the Android handset market alongside its delayed nuvifone line, giving Android users a first-party-quality turn-by-turn option where today only the Alpha-stage, US-less AndNav2 exists.
- Google gains a marquee validation win for Android's location capabilities from the company that leads standalone GPS.
Second-order effects
- Rival navigation specialists face pressure to follow: TomTom eventually did ship on Android years later, though its app arrived incompatible with many popular devices, illustrating how hard the port proved.
- PDA/phone OEMs like Asus — Garmin's eventual nuvifone hardware partner — become the likely manufacturing path for a GPS brand without phone-making experience.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, dedicated GPS hardware vendors are structurally converted into software and services layers inside someone else's mobile OS — a shift Nokia's HERE maps landing on Samsung Galaxy phones later confirmed for another incumbent.
- Turn-by-turn navigation migrates from a premium device feature to a commodity app capability, compressing the pricing power that built Garmin's PND business and forcing regulation-relevant consolidation of mapping assets among fewer owners.
The trend: Specialized device makers are being absorbed into smartphone operating-system ecosystems, trading hardware margins for software distribution as location becomes a default platform service.