"I think the whole idea of multifunction converged devices seemed like a good idea, but in reality, they tended not to be so great," says Needham's Valera.
Hello Tech,
Thanks for replying to my post in April.<g> I lose track of my own questions on SI.
Reading through some of your posts, I came back to the idea of SiRF and cell phones as a platform for Location-Based Services (LBS). There are discussions regarding how exactly one would use GPS to provide LBS. Everybody seems to want to pile into a cell phone, for examples cameras, MP3 players and LBS. This is natural because the air link allows over-the-air (OTA) transmission of pictures, songs and geographical locations.
However, this is what Garmin, together with SiRF, do not yet provide. For a PDA to provide useful LBS, it needs both the GPS and an air link, along with some compelling application on the PDA with cool graphics. Since Garmin already has enough storage capabilities within their products for an entire US database, they should be able to handle some OTA downloads to augment their current product features.
There are now all-you-can-eat data cards sold by the cell phone operators in the US. Verizon and Sprint use assisted-GPS for their applications. If Garmin produced a combined GPS and cell link PDA (the user would have to sign up), they could take advantage of A-GPS services and the internet access to appeal to high-end users.
However, if they don’t eventually move to an OTA connection, they may lose PND market share to cell phones over the next few years. Maybe Nokia can help SiRF do this, but I wouldn’t put big money on that.
Best regards |
