Well most of Garmin's GPS receivers use either Sirf or STM gps chipsets. Garmin could build a Xscale powered smartphone which would be very similar to their current PDA BT offerings without the bluetooth. If what you mean by a Garmin partnership is a SOC with builtin GPS/Wifi/BT capabilities I think the partnership would have to involve Sirf or STM, and then it really has very litle to do with to with Garmin. That chip could be sold eveywhere. But I do tend to think that if Garmin does not develop a solution to the current trend away from dedicated GPS towards smartphones, it is really limited in terms of growth.
A partnership with RIM or HTC, involving MRVL contributing the reference design, seems to be most feasible.