daffy

Trading Garmin for a Bounce

hardrookwar ~

Do you think tha GRMN is doing a bit of data collection and reducng their reliance on any company that provides mapping data?

If I were at the top there, I would have a team of lawyers protect and making sure that any additonal data collection ensures proprietary significance and any existing contracts suggest that the changes to data tables inherently alters proprietary rights.

NVT would then be meaningless, and so would nokia. I get the feeling that nokia got a sour deal here.

I tend to believe that the people in charge at GRMN are a hell of a lot smarter than you are giving them credit for.

Now, as far as your speculation goes that Cell Phones are the only way people get their info . . . I am not so sure I agree with that. Cellphones are cell phones. Even though I would love to have one of those 1960's AT&T land line phones in my house, I am not going to go out and get one. Phones are a disposable item, and I doubt they will ever serve the same purpose as a PND. Now, in that thinking you have to realize that PND's will NEVER penetrate the market like cell phones will, UNLESS some genius can force the PND into a cell phone.

My guess . . .

GRMN will couple themselves with a cell phone manufacturer (sound familiar) and force the integration. After this technology hits the market, AAPL will come along and reinvent the cell-pnd union and tout it as the newest technology that exists and all the latte sipping, Onion believing Madisonites will help to make it the next new fad.

At that point we will see that PND's, cell phones, and personal data storage and utility devices will merge into one. I think Nokia is a little late to the market, and all GRMN has to do is to start building cell phones (instead of buying a cell phone company) and align themselves with a few international carriers and build a NEW WORLD NETWORK. How would evaluate GRMN then?

That being said, I am still going to sell when GRMN hits 70, unless the news changes and the madisonites start chanting in some binary mapping unison.