The rumor we reported last week, that Navigon is out of the US GPS Market appears to be true. The company will be slimming down operations in North America to deal with the slowing GPS business, in reaction to the deep discounts that the market leading makers of Garmin and TomTom are offering (or are forced to offer due to high supplies). Garmin and TomTom have this market tied up and as I have written before, their agressive pricing is making it hard for a newcomer to differentiate themselves while demanding the same reasonable price and margins that the big guys get.

Hats off to Navigon for pushing the envelope on Lifetime Traffic with the purchase of your GPS and map updates through a quarterly update service called FreshMaps.

GPS Business News has a short but sweet interview with the Navigon CEO Egon Minar where he said, “Due to the difficult economic environment and the aggressive pricing we have decided to withdraw from the PND business in North America for the time being. We are however not closing down our Chicago office which will continue to serve our automotive and mobile phone businesses in North America.”

More at GPS Business News

Source: GpsLodge
Read more here:Navigon to Shutter US GPS Operations

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