The GPS Insider

Garmin made a splash last night and announced their new mobile phone. The nüvifone will feature a 3.5-inch touchscreen, internet browser, HSDPA support, Bluetooth, WiFi, camera, media player, and preloaded maps of North America and / or Europe. In addition, it houses “millions” of POIs, doles out turn-by-turn, and voice-prompted directions. Garmin has partnered with Google to integrate access to Local Search and Panoramio. But here’s the problem - the devices run Garmin’s proprietary PND OS.

As expected, there has been considerable confusion and ignorance coming from Street analysts and the media. No, this is not Garmin’s first foray into the mobile phone market (Garmin NavTalk) nor is it “the first time navigation and LBS have been put at the core of a wireless device” as an Oppenheimer note trumpeted (Nokia 6110 Navigator).

This strategy is hardly unexpected - GRMN has taken a ugly beating over the last three months because of the perceived threat of shrinking PND margins and increased competition from mobile phone manufacturers. Garmin knows they need to enter the market in a big way. But without the scale and distribution that device makers like Nokia and Samsung enjoy, does Garmin stand a chance? I think it’s likely that Apple, Nokia and HTC will eat Garmin for lunch. Keep your eyes peeled - nüvifone is expected in Q3.

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With this morning’s housing numbers showing an 11% YoY decline in median home prices and a 9.6 month supply at the current sales rate, this deal raises some eyebrows. Mobile real estate listing company Smarter Agent recently closed a $6.2 million “oversubscribed” first round of funding. The round was led by private equity magnate Ira Lubert, who co-founded Lubert-Adler’s multi-billion dollar real estate fund, LLR Partners, Quaker Bio Ventures and Versa Capital. The funding will support the roll-out of Smarter Agent’s GPS real estate searches including a Homes for Sale application due to launch at the beginning of Spring. Smarter Agent has a service which lets people find houses for rent or sale near where they are when they make the enquiry—it launched on Sprint a year or so ago and gains subscription revenue though a monthly fee. It claims that over 25,000 people used the service over the summer and 35 percent placed calls to the agent/property owner.

That’s a nice-sized investment for the company and should help to get things moving. Right now they’re stagnating with just one carrier, Sprint Nextel (which happens to be bleeding to death right now). Integrating the apps with an ad model should work well. And with one third of users placing calls to owners/brokers there could be a really nice commission model there as well. It would make sense to push the app for free, although the carriers would never let that fly. I’ll bet that Apartments for Rent application will get some good traction with the foreclosure tidal wave upon us…

via MocoNews.net

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Finally back and recovering from the 2008 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s always jarring to go straight from a nice, long holiday vacation to the CES three-ring circus. My impression of the show in one word: disappointed. Maybe the most exciting thing was that Garmin had a GPS repeater set up at their booth to get a live feed for demo devices. Or perhaps that 150″ Panasonic plasma. But isn’t this the consumer electronics show? Come on guys, that’s an ego trip, not a consumer product. And Garmin shares have fallen nearly 25% since the show began, so obviously the Street didn’t like the repeaters as much as I did. Not much new for phones either, although I liked the GPS-enabled Sony Ericsson W760. But hardly big news. Truthfully, connected devices were the theme this year. Garmin announced MSN Direct-powered PNDs like the Nuvi 780 and 880. Magellan had the Maestro Elite 5340 with Google Local Search via two-way connectivity over GPRS, but that will set you back $1300 and $40/mo. And don’t forget Dash Navigation. Last year’s big news of the show was the iPhone, but that wasn’t even at CES. So here’s some food for thought - is the CES hype too big for its own good?

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Uniden is a relative newcomer to the GPS game, but it has years of experience in high-end radar detectors. So it’s no surprise that, come CES, it will be the first company to introduce a MapTrax GPS navigator with radar detection built in. This should be a profitable niche for Uniden, even as prices and margins are plummeting on mainstream PNDs. Of course, detectors are illegal in a few regions. Maybe Uniden will lock down the detector functionality in banned areas like Virginia by using GPS location.

via Gizmodo (thanks Brett)

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