I’m here in rainy/cold Olathe, Kansas, visiting Garmin, the world’s largest GPS device manufacturer.
Last January, Garmin unveiled the nüvifone, a GPS with a 3.5G smartphone inside that looks like an iPhone or Blackberry Bold with a touchscreen, WiFi and a built-in video camera.
The nüvifone was supposed to launch this Fall but Garmin could not convince on time a wireless carrier to carry the GPS smartphone, which is why the nüvifone will eventually be part of this category of mobile device that at first sounded like a great idea but that eventually failed.
Can anyone remember General Magic?
Garmin now plans to officially launch the nüvifone at the Mobile World Congress, next February in Barcelona, Spain.
“We’ve entered wireless carriers labs for testing… The personal navigation devices market will be compromise by mobile phones”, admitted Jon Cassat.
But I’m skeptical the nüvifone will ever see the light of day and my guess is that the company might just scrap the project before then. And here’s why:
- All U.S. wireless carriers, even Sprint, have a “killer” smartphone. So I doubt they really want/need another device to subsidize/qualify/support. Also, for reasons detailed below (competition and price), the nüvifone will not be a volume device and will not attract large wireless carrier;
- The new smartphones from Apple, RIM, Samsung, Motorola and LG are all GPS capable and can run more or less the same navigation software than a Garmin device. So a GPS that is phone capable is a too little of a real distinction to really matter;
- And did I mention the economy? The nüvifone is going to be a pricey device and in this economy with wireless carriers not willing to subsidize yet another “niche” smartphone. So without a subsidy, the nüvifone is almost dead on arrival.
[...] wrote earlier here why I thought the nüvifone will not be a successful smartphone compare to let say, an iPhone, a [...]