Garmin buys Maine-based GPS products company DeLorme

[pickpaul]

Garmin buys Maine-based GPS products company DeLorme | The Kansas City Star

Implications for cruisers?

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[Pete O Static]

Implications?

In my opinion, not good. Raymarine and Garmin are notorious for buying up companies which provide a great product and either shelving it or turning into some form of proprietary garbage.

At the end of the day, you see companies like Apelco, Ratheon, Tack Tick, Dynastream Innovations, Navigon, and many more disappear, leaving fewer options for the consumer.

[SoonerSailor]

Not good. DeLorme was the only real competitor to Garmin in the handheld market. OTOH DeLorme has had a hard time meeting Garmin's advances in the field.


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[frozenhawaiian]

Originally Posted by SoonerSailor

Not good. DeLorme was the only real competitor to Garmin in the handheld market. OTOH DeLorme has had a hard time meeting Garmin's advances in the field.


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land based GPS users, sure. those of us on the water. little to no difference. raymarine and garmin are obviously the 2 heavy hitters. personal opinion is that garmin is second to none when it comes to marine electronics. acquiring delorme will help them bolster their land nav division. raymarine is a subsidiary of FLIR who has a ton of major defense contracts which as we all know are big money. raymarine seems to have lagged behind garmin the past few years with their marine equipment, my assumption being that their parent company is allocating funds to other areas which are proving to be more lucrative.

[Time2Go]

Delorme is a great company with
Excellent customer service
I for one don't take this as a great development
Delorme was customer and product centric
going to be interesting to see what the bean counters do to it.
They are after the recurring income from Air-time
I was always able to get "The Guy" on the phone
I fear now it's going to be phone que BS

[Ribbit]

Not happy at all about this.

Was close to buying an InReach Explorer, it's now struck off the shopping list.

[a64pilot]

Garmin wasn't anything in the Aviation world several years ago and bought the UPS systems, but UPS had bought them from Apollo,
Garmin took that purchase and expanded it so now they are likely the number 1 aviation comm / nav / glass cockpit systems there are.
Since they really set the world on fire with systems, it took the existing leaders by surprise, like Bendix King. They although lagging behind have really brought out new systems too. But until Garmin came along, Avionics had sort of stagnated.
Point being, once Garmin bought out UPS and got into aviation, it had stagnated, now the consumer is the big winner.


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