Standalone GPS devices are a dying breed. Anyone with a half-way decent smartphone can get from point A to point B with a few taps of an onscreen keyboard and it’s abundantly clear that standalone devices will end up being the the province of old folks. That said, TomTom and Garmin are seeing roses and puppy dogs.
Quoth Bloomberg:
“In the summer period, we’ve seen quite a good development in demand,” TomTom Chief Executive Officer Harold Goddijn said in an interview at his Amsterdam office. “We’re becoming more optimistic.” He declined to forecast revenue for the portable navigation devices, or PND, industry next year.
Garmin also believes the personal navigation device isn’t dead but I point both companies to a little something that also started with P – the PDA. Palm and Compaq fought a valiant fight but in the end the smartphone took over and killed the PIM/PDA industry. Whoosh. Gone. Unless TomTom and Garmin go all software – and they are – they’re toast. The PND market isn’t going up. It will be flat to down next year and gone by the end of the decade.
Old folks?! I resemble that remark!
Seriously though, I love my Garmin. While my iPhone can certainly guide me from point A to point B, my phone is pretty busy doing other things while I’m driving (like phone calls and playing music) and having a dedicated device that just does navigation is just somehow more reliable to me. A smart phone can do many things well, but that doesn’t mean it always does everything best.
weatherman, you know I love you and you know I’m being ageist to prove a point.
i’m not going to give my mom an iPhone with GPS. She won’t be able to handle it. BUT I won’t buy her another GPS unit when hers breaks. I’ll figure something else out. The market is tapped. There was a boom a few years ago and anyone with $200 to spend already bought one and those things aren’t going anywhere for the next four years. to be completely honest I doubt my parents used the GPS once since I bought it for them and it was a nice TomTom unit.
the palm pre, the iphone, and all android phones have great directions built right in. I literally went from a period of printing out paper directions (mapquest then google) to using only a smartphone in about a year – there was no interim step, no PND in there. i think my behavior is indicative of what is coming.
What an Idiot. This whole one device to rule em all mentality is a fantasy that belongs in fantasy land.
What a dumb article clearly written by a rambling fool, using one example like a monkey doing sign language. Please spare us from your lack of knowledge… Moron.
go home, dad, you’re drunk.
I’ll go home once you stop acting like a dumb punk, son. Quit sullying the family name by writing trite articles. And I’m drunk because its the only way I can stand to look at your mother.
Seriously though, I love my Garmin. While my iPhone can certainly guide me from point A to point B, my phone is pretty busy doing other things while I’m driving
I agree completely.
I would rather buy a GPS than pay rent for GPS service on my phone.
Man, I never knew so many people on this site lived in the past. You did waste you’re money already so go ahead and use it, but when you are done carrying your “man purse” with your phone, mp3 player, GPS, netbook, laptop, satelite radio, pager, and redi alert you should really give a smart phone a try.
No one would bother to have BOTH a netbook and a laptop with them, since a netbook is really a castrated laptop in the first place. For those with a LOT of music, you will notice that many smart-phones don’t have an SD card slot in them, so you are limited to the amount of memory in the device.
Yes, if you live with a limited need for each type of device, then you can get away with a smart-phone. At the same time, it takes 4GB of storage just to handle maps for both North America and Europe(2GB or so each). So, 2GB for a map that will be fine, add memory for the GPS application plus POI database, voices, and then, how much music do you have? What about the videos that so many people put on their smart-phones these days? Until you see a smart-phone with a 30GB storage capacity, there are limits there.
I also have not seen Sat radio included in smart-phones yet, though there are Internet radio apps available.
Now, I don’t have a ton of devices I keep with me. I have a smart-phone that I use, and I had Tomtom Navigator 6 software on an old phone, but I found that the phone caused problems with my use of the GPS. The size of the screen on a dedicated GPS can also be a LOT larger(the new Tomtom XXL models are an example of where things are going) than anything you would want in a phone, just because of the battery requirements of the larger screens. You don’t want a 5 inch screen for a phone you keep in your pocket.
Does this mean that now that I can watch movies on my smartphone I am going to get rid of my 50 inch HD TV?
Have any of these people claiming that “Standalone GPS devices are a dying breed” ever driven a car? Or do they just walk around NYC confident that everyone does the same. Just try reading the tiny map on your smartphone while driving and tell me again that that the standalone GPS systems history.
This “article” has a number of flaws that need to be addressed.
First off, as with the whole computer games on a PC vs. a console, there are advantages to a standalone GPS vs. the same software written to work on many different platforms. You have stability issues when you have to code for multiple hardware platforms. So, which operating system do you have on your phone, Windows Mobile(5,6,7…?), PalmOS for the few PalmOS devices still out there, WebOS for the new Palm devices, Symbian, Android 1 and 2, and the list goes on. So, you buy for one platform, and then if you change brands of phone you have to buy new GPS software, or the GPS software has to have multiple versions for each possible phone, and then the complaints about a slow phone causing the GPS software to break in unpredictable ways.
Then, you also have to look at how much processing power will be needed for the GPS software to operate properly. With a dedicated unit, you don’t have to worry, but do you want your phone to drop calls because the GPS software takes too much processing power? What about the ability to properly do multiple things at once on a phone, is the OS really designed to handle multiple tasks at once? Do you want an incoming call to suddenly interrupt your directions when you are on the road?
Yes, all of these things COULD be addressed, but when you are driving and need the GPS to get to where you are going, the last thing you want is for a call to get you lost. Also, don’t forget battery life as an issue. Two devices, each with a battery will work better when not connected to a charger than a single device that does both.
There are not nearly enough reviews out there that focus on just how good all of these “apps” are for the more popular smart-phones as well. The iPhone for example may have a ton of applications out there for it, but, how good is the iPhone as a phone? I have not seen a single true comparison to compare how well the iPhone does as a phone compared to phones from LG, Samsung, Nokia, Palm(PalmOS based devices are available for AT&T), LG, and so on. Could all those dropped call issues that people say are an AT&T problem just be caused by the iPhone not being very good when it comes to call stability?
Both Garmin and Tomtom are right, they are not out of the game, and that is also because while some people may find a poor GPS application written by some unknown company to be acceptable, there will always be a desire for quality, and easily updated maps.
Many cars have a GPS in them, yet, the quality of the maps, software, ease of use, etc are also not really looked at. Seriously, compare Tomtom and Garmin, each has strengths and weaknesses. Now, how many reviews have you seen that compare the built-in GPS systems in various car models to see how good or bad they are?
This is why I don’t think these companies will go away. There will ALWAYS be a market for devices that really do the job and are higher quality than the “free” stuff that may come with a smart-phone.