Since there are others on the board who follow Garmin , the rumor that Nokia might be interested in buying Navteq speaks reams of the future for Garmin and to a lesser extent Apple and the iPhone.

This would be pretty terrible news for GRMN, though I guess that they have a deal with Navteq providing them with maps for at least a few years..!

If I were Navteq I wouldn’t see the point in joining Nokia, Navteq has a close-to-monopoly in GPS mapping and sells to nearly every manufacturer

This deal was confirmed about 30mins ago.

GRMN is tanking.

[quote author=“wheeles”]GRMN is tanking.

Cramer and his friends set up GRMN for shorting.  They probably heard that NOK would buy Navteq, hence GRMN would tank.  So buy GRMN heavily, spread news that GRMN is hot, sell GRMN holdings and short heavily today.  Classic pump and dump.  Now I know why Market is so hot about GRMN recently.

Cramer sure looks dumb today (once again), but I think that he didn’t know about the NOK-NVT deal…

Anyway, I’m trying to find out if prospects for GRMN have changed with this piece of news, but I can’t imagine how NVT would snob Garmin and TomTom just because NOK owns it (I’m wrong a lot )

The new problem for Garmin is competition from Nokia. Of course Navteq will continue selling maps to Garmin, TomTom, Magellan and others, but it seems as if Nokia means business in the PND devices. A cell-phone will never substitute a dedicated navigation device on a car,boat or airplane, but it can compete with a portable navigation device.

Garmin’s bread and butter is from marine and air navigation units, with some from the auto. But now the personal navigation devices space has gotten quite a lot more crowded.

[quote author=“awcabot”]The new problem for Garmin is competition from Nokia. Of course Navteq will continue selling maps to Garmin, TomTom, Magellan and others, but it seems as if Nokia means business in the PND devices. A cell-phone will never substitute a dedicated navigation device on a car,boat or airplane, but it can compete with a portable navigation device.

Garmin’s bread and butter is from marine and air navigation units, with some from the auto. But now the personal navigation devices space has gotten quite a lot more crowded.

Garmin’s revenue comes primarily from car and recreational navigation, whereas aviation, though being their field of expertise (and complete dominance) doesn’t grow as fast or isn’t as big as the classic CE market

I’m worried that NVT won’t be able to provide the absolute best now that it is in hostile hands…

The iPhone doesn’t have GPS.  Maybe whenever it gets a GPS chipset, Apple will hook up with Garmin.

I’d never even heard of Navteq until a day or so ago.  That would have been a stock I could have easily invested in earlier in the year and the boat has long sailed.

I need to find some decent growth companies that don’t come with lightning rods to attract bad press and lawsuits every few days.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that paying $8B for a company that produces mapping data and software somewhat excessive? Nokia seem to be trying to grow into all sorts of areas in what to me looks like a misguided strategy to be all things to all people and - like its phones - jack of all trades, master or none.

The N95 in my eyes epitomises everything wrong with Nokia: over-thought, ill-conceived, over-engineered, badly-designed, fully-featured, lousy functionality. This purchase of Navtech seems another step down the road of becoming another Microsoft-like slow-moving behemoth that is trying to make its presence felt not through genuine innovation but by trying to dominate its territory though acquisitions. I see the company making misjudgement after misjudgement through sheer blind arrogance and greed, and a completely false sense of its own importance, not to mention a massive overestimation of its brand power.

I think Nokia is heading for a rude awakening.

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”]Is it just me, or does anyone else think that paying $8B for a company that produces mapping data and software somewhat excessive? Nokia seem to be trying to grow into all sorts of areas in what to me looks like a misguided strategy to be all things to all people and - like its phones - jack of all trades, master or none.

The N95 in my eyes epitomises everything wrong with Nokia: over-thought, ill-conceived, over-engineered, badly-designed, fully-featured, lousy functionality. This purchase of Navtech seems another step down the road of becoming another Microsoft-like slow-moving behemoth that is trying to make its presence felt not through genuine innovation but by trying to dominate its territory though acquisitions. I see the company making misjudgement after misjudgement through sheer blind arrogance and greed, and a completely false sense of its own importance, not to mention a massive overestimation of its brand power.

I think Nokia is heading for a rude awakening.

Tommo,

I think this was a very smart move on their part - the price I don’t know about.

Handsets are moving towards being multi-use machines - dock it in your car and it becomes your Nav system. I see the iPhone adding such functionality in the future. Why should a Nav system be tethered/mounted to one car/vehicle?

HAB

[quote author=“HotAirBaffoon”]I think this was a very smart move on their part - the price I don’t know about.
Handsets are moving towards being multi-use machines - dock it in your car and it becomes your Nav system. I see the iPhone adding such functionality in the future. Why should a Nav system be tethered/mounted to one car/vehicle?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think on-phone GPS is a bad idea - quite the opposite: I consider it a “killer app” and bemoan the fact that it isn’t (yet) enabled on the iPhone.
But why did Nokia need to blow eight billion Dollars on it? Weren’t they able to write their own GPS software (Navtech apparently wront the GPS app on Nokia’s phones) or design their own equipment? It just seems like the company is on an acquisition spending spree at the moment, simply because they either can’t be bothered, or don’t have the expertise, to do things themselves.

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”]Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think on-phone GPS is a bad idea - quite the opposite: I consider it a “killer app” and bemoan the fact that it isn’t (yet) enabled on the iPhone.
But why did Nokia need to blow eight billion Dollars on it? Weren’t they able to write their own GPS software (Navtech apparently wront the GPS app on Nokia’s phones) or design their own equipment? It just seems like the company is on an acquisition spending spree at the moment, simply because they either can’t be bothered, or don’t have the expertise, to do things themselves.

Nokia bought Navteq’s maps for it’s huge database of information, not their map making software. And making maps requires a lot of work with many young employees who drive around and write down what they see (I met one in the Greek islands this summer). If Nokia can provide better maps for it’s customers instead of one map for all GPS navigators, it can gain a considerable following.

$8B for the IP behind Navteq does not seem farfetched.

[quote author=“awcabot”][quote author=“Tommo_UK”]Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think on-phone GPS is a bad idea - quite the opposite: I consider it a “killer app” and bemoan the fact that it isn’t (yet) enabled on the iPhone.
But why did Nokia need to blow eight billion Dollars on it? Weren’t they able to write their own GPS software (Navtech apparently wront the GPS app on Nokia’s phones) or design their own equipment? It just seems like the company is on an acquisition spending spree at the moment, simply because they either can’t be bothered, or don’t have the expertise, to do things themselves.

Nokia bought Navteq’s maps for it’s huge database of information, not their map making software. And making maps requires a lot of work with many young employees who drive around and write down what they see (I met one in the Greek islands this summer). If Nokia can provide better maps for it’s customers instead of one map for all GPS navigators, it can gain a considerable following.

$8B for the IP behind Navteq does not seem farfetched.

There are essentially 2 map service providers.  NavTeq and TeleAtlas.

Only very recently Tom Tom bought out TeleAtlas…. that left NavTeq the only independent provider of mapping services…. 

By buying NavTeq… they are effectively controlling the mapping software/ services available to PC/Devices…

Barriers to entry into the mapping service are high, startup costs are reckonded to be close to $0.5Bn.

Today Google Maps relies on data from TeleAtlas.

This was a very smart move.  Nokia mentioned earlier this year it wanted to get into Internet Services.  This was strategic.

HAB, awcabot, singularity - thanks for the insight

[quote author=“singularity99”] ... Only very recently Tom Tom bought out TeleAtlas ... Today Google Maps relies on data from TeleAtlas ...

Forcing Google to buy TomTom?