News Focus
News Focus
icon url

Waterloo85

10/03/07 12:37 PM

#11467 RE: cbs13 #11462

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.
icon url

finetoothcomb

10/03/07 1:49 PM

#11475 RE: cbs13 #11462

Garmin has a great consumer brand, but I'm not sure they have enough software engineers to get the UI right to make it's own handset. But I do see Garmin as a software program that will be licensed to handset OEMs that would give consumers a reason to upgrade to a smartphone which would be great for Marvell and it's Xscale processors.