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Comment by hvjackson | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this is just my consumer perspective but I feel like TomTom really missed on a pivot to other GPS-related products that Garmin has successfully nailed. 10-15 years ago both companies were known mainly for car sat-nav systems but Garmin now has an incredibly diverse product line with well-liked fitness watches, bike computers, exploring/off-grid satellite communicators, marine charts, aviation, etc. Whereas TomTom seems stuck still selling the same handful of automobile satnav products which are surely squeezed to a tiny consume base between smartphone apps and feature-rich car screens.

I know there is map IP as well and maybe that's their only real business opportunity going forward.

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I think you're right. Garmin has other big-ticket lines of business (Marine, Aviation) but "Fitness" is where they're making most of their money: https://www8.garmin.com/aboutGarmin/invRelations/reports/202...

"Auto" is notably sitting in last place.

I'm surprised that you can make more money from bike accessories than from aircraft avionics, but I guess everyone needs a bike accessory and nobody really NEEDS a G1000. Plus, no FAA to send paperwork to when you want to make a new bike pedal.

>I'm surprised that you can make more money from bike accessories than from aircraft avionics

Maybe if you're Garmin, and make very little aircraft avionics. They've never made much on it, since they only make a tiny piece of what aircraft use.

Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, GE (still in the game?) make enough on aircraft avionics to buy Garmin many times over. Garmin never made it into the space of high end aircraft positioning systems.

That might change. They’ve launched a new autonomous landing system and seems like more is coming

https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/

Flew yesterday in a Cessna 172 with G1000 glass cockpit for the first time. It's a pretty sweet product so hopefully they find more success in avionics.

TomTom is mostly a B2B company now. Their main customers are other companies like Apple. I doubt they make a lot of money from consumer devices.

Wasn’t Garmin already an established company with other GPS-based product lines before they got into car satnav?

Correct, they are also in avionics business which gives them nice revenue too.

Ah, the secret to "success" in all things: already having piles of money.

Garmin makes commercial, aviation, defense, etc. kinds of GPS systems and was producing systems.

This was their first product, http://retro-gps.info/Garmin/Pronav-GPS-100/index.html and their first customer was the US Army. It replaced Army GPS systems which weighed nearly 40 pounds.

I bought my first Garmin device more than 20 years ago and already back then they were the go-to source for consumer handheld GPS location/mapping devices.

Tomtom did try to enter this market with a series of GPS watches [0] some years back but the garmin watches were better in nearly every way and dominated the market quite quickly.

[0]: https://www.amazon.ca/TomTom-Runner-GPS-Watch-Black/dp/B00IK...

Garmin seems to be nailing it. I've recently got more into golf & snorkeling and Garmin have attractive devices for both those random activities that I could definitely see buying at some stage.

Actually TomTom has deal with few car manufacturers to provide those feature-rich screens.

TomTom also tried to sell GPS fitness tracker watches but they weren't any better than competing products from Garmin, Suunto, and others.

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