Unsuccessful Garmin-ASUS venture to end in January 2011

By on Oct 22, 2010 at 9:56 AM
Rumor October 22, 2010

It was all but written in the stars, and now it is also written in the Chinese paper Economic Daily — Garmin will soon be un-ASUS’d and ASUS is losing its Garmin. The two companies will reportedly not be renewing a two-year contract that birthed such mediocre smartphones as the Nuvifone M20 and T-Mobile’s Garminfone. Truth be told, each of the aforementioned handsets provided a navigation experience that was well above average when it comes to phones, but a great integrated nav experience seemingly isn’t enough to seal the deal with smartphone-seeking end users. The joint venture that started with a bunch of question marks and exclamation points nearly two years ago will end with an ellipsis, however, as the two companies will apparently continue working together in some capacity; Garmin will provide navigation software for future ASUS-branded handsets. We would love to say something like, “It was fun while it lasted,” but we imagine the entire ordeal was pretty stressful for everyone involved.

[Via Engadget]

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  • Mr. Bill

    So the phone that would cost you each year to update the mapping is a fail… Never seen that coming.

  • Darnell

    At least they knew it was time to cut their losses…

  • 3 Phones Jugglin

    Took long enough…

  • Mitch

    Maybe Asus was a bad partnet?

    Garmin makes the best GPS devices, hands down. Asus doesn’t make the best phones, not anywhere close.

    Android 1.5 or 1.6? No thanks.

  • wirecup

    I think the future of ASUS in North America is now in question since they could not bring out an upgraded model of the Garminfone to get to a desirable model that people would buy. It’s downfall was an old OS when it came out and it was never upgraded, small battery, mediocre camera, 3.5 inch 320×480 screen when the premiun smart phones were going to 480×800 screens, no 3.5 mm headphone jack, no HDMI out, no slide out consumer sized keyboard, no face camera for video calls, no forward looking GPS frequencies (and apparently no WAAS capability for better accuracy), not the fastest CPU, no information about using off-road and nautical maps, GPS program ended when a phone call arrived (not on continuously or lacked dead reckoning) and on the wrong network (T-Mobile) for suitable 3G access. Doomed from day one.

  • Thirteen

    Wow…it took this long? One wonders who actually thought the GarminPhone was a GOOD idea to begin with?

    As much as I like my Garmin GPS, I think TomTom had the right idea by putting its’ software on Smartphones.

    I’m glad that they finally figured it out though. Perhaps now they’ll recant and offer a nice GPS package for smartphones.

    • Wirecup

      This appeared to be a great concept/idea and was what I was looking for until it was fielded and then there were too many shortcomings/omissions to consider it as a viable converged device. However, in retrospect this is what Garmin does: they do not publish device specs and they produce very narrow minded applications and products as the word convergence is not in their vocabulary (convergence is what smart phones are all about). Both Garmin’s and ASUS’s public images are damaged by this poor product offering.

  • NuShrike

    Bring back Garmin Mobile XT for Android, damn it!

  • watbetch

    If they didn’t port over that horrible interface from Windows Mobile, to a stale version of Android at that — and priced the phone appropriately they might’ve had a fighting chance.

  • STR

    I think the new partnership is a great step in the right direction. Nobody wants a smartphone that depreciates the user experience over the whole OS in favor of a single app (nav in this case). You’re going to spend the bulk of your time with the phone doing things other than navigating.

    As such, leaving the main OS closer to stock Android (or WP7, whatever point is it’s more balanced and general purpose), while concentrating on a really polished, well integrated nav app, that’s superior to the default Google/Bing suite is a actually a very compelling combination.

    Think about it, you had to make some big sacrifices to get the Nuvi, old OS, weird UI. What if you had two phones, a generic android competitor, and an Asus phone with the Garmin App. Both generally work the same, they cost the same, but the Asus has this better navigator (that works offline too). That would be a hard choice for me, personally, which is something that Garmin-Asus hasn’t been able to do to me yet.

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