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Garmin: Nuvifone's North American launch still on hold
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Garmin said that its long-delayed nuvifone will go one sale in Asia in the next month, but that the phone's North America and European launch is still on hold. Garmin COO Cliff Pemble made the announcement at a shareholder meeting in suburban Kansas City Friday.
"We believe we're getting very close," Pemble said at the meeting, according to the Associated Press. The company had two phone designs on display at the meeting. The nuvifone is supposed offer various location-based features.
The nuvifone was originally announced in January 2008, but the phone's launch has been delayed numerous times. The device received FCC approval in December, but there has been no word on whether it would be paired with a specific U.S. carrier.
"We haven't, unfortunately, performed the way we hoped to on releasing the product," Pemble said. He also noted that Garmin had planned to release the phone without a carrier partner, but has since decided against that. While a number of handset makers--including Nokia and Sony Ericsson--have taken the direct-to-consumer route, such efforts lack the support of lower prices via carrier subsidies.
Pemble did not say which carriers Garmin had approached for a North American launch and declined to comment on a price for the phone in Asia. Garmin still expects to release a North American version in the second half of this year.
For more:
- see this AP article
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Comments
Posted by Burl (from OZ) | June 23, 2009 - 6:55pm
I have been waiting for the Nuvifone for over a year. I got desperate and bought an HTC Fuze, which I loaded with Garmin Mobile XT, but it was not worth it even though it did some really cool things. The navigation program did not have all the poi and nav details onboard the chip so it won't work without a data plan and a tower close enough for transmission (couldn't sit in my la-z-boy and plan my vacation.) Besides, I could never get it to hook up to my lan. Everything else does. It looks like AT&T did something to block that so I would have to keep the data plan. I took it back to the AT&T store & paid the $20 return fee.
With the Nuvifone, all the poi info and nav detail will be onboard, so you can get it anytime, but you will also be able to access MORE info like live traffic updates and restaurant menus online. Also, it looks like the G60 will now be Android based so you will be able to make it do whatever you want. I'll bet the holdup in production comes from trying to haggle that out with AT&T. I've been with them from the beginning, even before they became Cingular and bought themselves back, but they ARE bad about forcing customers to pay for more services by limiting access to free services (like wifi) elsewhere.
Posted by Kingpin | July 30, 2009 - 8:57pm
The inside scoop is this, the programming, design, and development of this product is so-very bad, that they've basically developed a 3rd-rate iPhone. Poorly managed company, terrible programmers, greedy board of directors who for the most-part make junk with some exceptions.
Advice to Garmin: Fire your crappy programmers, their managers, and hire and put the right people in their place. Oh and by the way, toss-out that racist Overland-Park mentality.
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