With the recent announcement of Android 2.0 and the eagerly anticipated addition of Google Maps Navigation, it should come as no surprise that established navigation companies like Garmin weren't as excited about it as us Android users were. However, as part of their "Q3 Earnings Call Webcast," Garmin has indicated that they plan on joining the Android team at some point next year. The image here is a page of the presentation indicating their intent. The full presentation can be found HERE.
This of course should come as no surprise from a company whose slogan is "Follow the Leader".
23 Responses to “Garmin Looks to Android for Direction” Leave a reply ›
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keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. good thinking garmin. I love my garmin handheld, but a garmin running android probably not a bad thing.
While many phones have GPSs, most of them have appalling accuracy. Augmented reality apps and many others would benefit greatly from greater accuracy - and it is easily possible -, yet consumers seem to focus exclusively on time-to-first fix. Is there still room for a real GPS company to take the lead on better hardware??? Educate the masses.
I'd love to see it but I doubt it. The phone industry is far too cutthroat to allow for a feature whose value may be hard to explain in a corporate board room. There's a lot of emphasis on "good enough." The best thing in the end may be to raise the bar on what "good enough" is to the consumer.
That said, there will be a lot of room on the software side for developers to take advantage of what Google will provide through this app.
there's not much to take advantage of, the nav app is pretty much all you can ask for. now its just a waiting game to see which GPS/NAV company signs up to join the OHA.
Android's not just a nav solution.
It's an OS that all these devices (nook, Garmin, etc) want to run on.
I feel so good when I read helpful articles like this on the internet.