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I guess I always assumed Garmin made most of their money on their aviation products, since they are so dominant and so expensive. And those are designed to rare
by mattmaroon 6y ago
I guess I always assumed Garmin made most of their money on their aviation products, since they are so dominant and so expensive. And those are designed to rarely if ever connect to the internet. But I guess I was pretty off on that, they’re only 20%.
On a side note the graphs of their revenues per year and by category show a company that successfully branched out when their former big category, automotive, which was 80% of their revenue, began to be eaten by in car GPS and then smart phones.
- fbnlsr 6y agoI used to sell Garmin car GPS back when I worked in a retail shop. They were really good devices. But yeah I'm with you I thought most of their money came from aviation (it seems like everyone uses Garmin products), but their sports watches sell like crazy. Actually, I realized their network was down because this morning my watch would not sync after a run. :)
- frosted-flakes 6y agoHonestly, they're still really good devices. I have one from last year that's a solid alternative to an in-dash navigation screen, and for what I use it for, just as good as Google Maps, and in many ways better (way more convenient and customizable, completely offline except traffic, bigger screen, auto-on...).
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoTheir latest motorcycle units are dog slow because some dumb product manager decided to build it on their old hardware platform using newer firmware which isn't a good mix. I have a 10 year old auto unit that is better then the junk they have now.
- parliament32 6y agoYeah I noticed this morning too, Garmin Connect says "maintenance" but of course HN has the real story.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y agoI've found even the absolute cheapest Garmin car GPS to be better than other brands 3x the price. I got some clearance-bin obsolete-model $99 Garmin GPS for my camping/roadtrip beater car and it's infinitely better than most the others I tried that were 3-4x the price (returned 2 other more expensive ones before giving up and buying the cheap Garmin).
- patja 6y agoMy small sailboat has over $5k in Garmin navigation electronics. I love that whenever I've had a problem I can almost immediately reach a knowledgeable and helpful support employee in Kansas (I think?) to help me.
- jesse_cureton 6y agoUsed to work in Garmin's marine division on these products.. thanks for the kind words and bringing up fond memories :)
- mattmaroon 6y agoGPS (obviously) and what else? Weather? Fish finders? I know next to nothing about sailing.
- patja 6y agoRadar, wind speed and direction, water speed, depth, water temp, and I also have their forward scanning sonar transducer.