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Comment by loloquwowndueo | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting that you mention Garmin - they’re a good example of pivoting from your original market (standalone gps units for cars) once you see a nimble competitor eating away at it (gps-enabled smartphones). Garmin would be dead if they had held fast on the standalone GPS market.

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I'm not sure you are fully aware of the markets that Garmin is in. When it comes to marine, aviation and offroad, you simply cannot run a gps app on a phone. E.g.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/aviation/general/

Thanks! I’m clearly not aware.

Yep, also, they had gpsr units way before their gpsunits for cars became popular. They started making GPS receivers in (I think) 1993:

https://static.garmin.com/pumac/GPS95AVD_PilotsGuide.pdf

"offroad, you simply cannot run a gps app on a phone"

I almost exclusively use GaiaGPS as my offroad GPS navigation app on my phone. It works perfectly fine and it has for a long time, roughly speaking 1/7th of my life.

You are correct, I should have been more specific - SxS, MTB and Enduro/Dualsport motorcycling. I've tried to use smart phones but they often heat up running a gps app in direct sunlight. More importantly the touch response accuracy caused me to double check the phone while trying to pay attention to the trail.

In applications such as jeep rock crawling, car camping - yes, smartphones will work. In more extreme activities - nope.

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