Garmin buys Navionics

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by BlackHeron

And by "government charts" what we are talking about here are charts already bought and paid for by the US taxpayers.

It is great that we can download charts for free for waterways within the United States, but the USN is using charts they have compiled over the years that span the entire planet. I'm not expecting top secret or classified information here -just access worldwide marine charts of adequate resolution and accuracy for which we have already paid for.

This should be a simple FOIA issue if you ask me. But what do I know?

Interesting. That would be a great asset!

I was actually thinking about ANY government charts. CHS has a different payment scheme (the user pays.) Still, I'd rather pay them, who are presumably answerable to voters, than a company like Garmin, who as Flyingriki points out are ripe with bean counters and monopolistic tendancies.

I believe there's some sort of treaty or agreement between all the world's cartography organizations not to step on each other's toes. I know US charts used to cover a lot more of Canadian waters than they do now. I vaguely remember reading about how and why this changed.

[Dave_S]

Sorry if this is coved further down the page.

In Australia, by law you must provide parts for a product for 10 years from date of purchase.

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Only problem is when you have had it for three years and it breaks you call and find out they don’t repair it anymore, it’s obsolete.

[Dave_S]

They would have run the numbers for all scenarios. One scenario would be.... If we drop all support for any device other than our own how many new sales of Garmin hardware would there be.

We have to hope that scenario wasn't the most profitable.

Originally Posted by CaptTom

That's easy. Growth.

Corporations don't exist to produce a product people need for a fair profit. They exist to grow the stockholder's value, preferably every quarter.

Fixed-mount hardware is a very profitable, but stable market. The growth is in mobile devices.

I'd be more concerned that the fixed-mount devices will suffer at the expense of mobile. In fact, I'd argue it's already happened, as myself and several others have pointed out how willing Garmin is to drop support for these and focus on next year's model.

[hpeer]

Whoa!

Navonics owns INavX? Are you sure?

I use iNavX a LOT. Really like it. Super support. I get my stuff through Fugawi.