Garmin Aquires Delorme Publishing and Delorme InReach

[Airmapper]

Oh please NO, don't let Delorme and Garmin work together on anything.....

Garmin is still stuck way behind in the GPS device world. Look at their focus on stand alone devices and the price points.

Delorme at least understand that people use smartphones and they make sure there are apps to connect the InReach to a phone to enhance the user experience.

Also Garmin killed it's software for laptop/netbook/tablet mobile use.
Delorme Topo works great on my netbook on my center console.

Will be interesting to watch.

Agreed, but maybe this is a hint Garmin is starting to be bothered a bit from the loss of dedicated unit sales. No one is buying GPS units when they have it in their phones, at least for the consumer market. They have other areas (glass cockpits for aircraft for one) that no doubt are still going strong.

Personally, I like dedicated devices. A jack-of-all-trades is master of none. I've yet to see a smartphone built as ruggedly as my old handheld GPS unit, or as stable on the programming end. And when it comes to navigation, I still find myself leaning on a standalone unit in the windshield over my tablet. I'll use both, but it's the dedicated unit that gets me home.

Now if Garmin (or anyone, competition is a grand thing...) would make a killer tablet app, that let me road navigate easily, and see topo and aerial mapping, and load detailed route plans to the device without it being modified, I'd be all over that.

 

[jpachard]

Let's hope Garmin doesn't move Inreach product manufacturing to China.....


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