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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Madharry who wrote (31651)	7/30/2008 3:13:52 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78625

GPS / GRMN - the cost of GPS chips is very low now, so there will be a large competition from cell phone makers. Look at cheapo point-and-shoot cameras - cell phone makers pretty much took that market and it's gone. So there are two things GRMN can do. First, it could try to compete in the low end. IMHO nuvifone is a wrong approach for that though, since it's very hard to get into cell phone market (iPhone is an exception). However, GRMN could go for low-end GPS devices that without phone functionality. It still may be competitive for some time while GPS phones are expensive. Second, GRMN can still compete in the auto market where cell phones will suck for foreseeable future. Auto GPS needs to have larger displays than most phones will have. Just audio directions are usually not sufficient. So IMHO, GRMN still has some good possibilities and directions. I would not discard it as "has been" here. On the other hand, unless it manages to get into low end devices and cover developing country needs, it will have hard time growing a lot.