1. Motorola's mobile unit is for sale
2. Garmin needs a big wireless play
   
3. Both are mid-west American companies
4. Both have market shares strongest in the US
5. Both have Magnificent Mile stores/direct-to-consumer strategies
   
6. Both share Nokia as an adversary
7. Both share Apple as an adversary
   
8. Garmin's offline, dedicated GPS business future is bleak
9. Motorola offers connectivity and carrier relationships that Garmin needs
   
10. Garmin's Nuviphone is not an experiment, like Garmin Mobile was

Dr Batty says he's coming out of the woodwork soon to unleash his spatial networking invention onto the facebook masses.  In other developments, team FOKUS is equally boiling-up some pioneering broth to not only include geospatial contexts but others like presentity, unified calling & conferencing, and instant messaging coupled with geospatial. 

With speculations of the good ole days of dedicated GPS device glory coming to an end, and soon, TheStreet.com is reporting that Garmin has joined Apple, and the duo are working on a project code-named Bobcat.  The best at music + the best at GPS Nav.  Hmmm.  What could the next in-vehicle infotainment system look like?  

• Magellan Says "Me To" to TomTom with Google
• Garmin Says "Ditto" With Microsoft, but through FM Radio
• Here's 5 reason's Why Both are Wrong
• Garmin Dumps D2C Carrier-Sponsored Distribution Overheads
  
• High Sensitivity in Colorado
• NiM Does WiMax Because There's Nothing Left To Do
• Yahoo! Has Life!, Open's Mobile With Widgets, and Inks Global Data Deal with NT
• TA Still Trying Tired Contests, Launches 3D
• Goodyear Rubber Hits The Road
• SonyEricsson Leaves the Puck Behind
• Mio Is Two-Faced
  
• Sony Bakes in Skype and GPS to PSP
• Intel Wants to Put the Internet in Your Pocket, Qualcomm Knows That Card

The last question of this morning's Garmin earnings call set the record straight with a priceless answer.  "You can call it fear, you can call it strategy.  We think our planned acquisition of Tele Atlas is inline with our corporate strategy."  Following that remark, Garmin, like Nokia-NAVTEQ before them, and TomTom-TA before them, again said the same thing - "the acquisition will not impact the open market conditions of supply to those who use our map data."  If that's true, then why does Garmin feel pressured to step up and counter TomTom's bid?!

Nokia's series of LBS bomb drops on the industry over the last two years has changed perspectives, attitudes, and business models overnight—the kind of disruption to be expected when the worlds #1 "multimedia computer manufacturer" gets serious about a line of business strategic to continued worldwide domination. When emerging competitive threats from new disruptive entrants such as Apple [and purportedly Google] begin to surface, and their Mobility strategies hone in on Location as the key asset for contextual mobility, you'd expect the world's mobile leader to take note, and make aggressive competitive moves to counter the threat. Nokia's acquisition of digital map data provider and world leader NAVTEQ is just that move. I'm relieved NAVTEQ is joining the community that built the LBS landscape now diversifying beyond Telecom-specific offerings into other converged areas, versus becoming part of a community that thus far has reduced map data value to worthlessness at the expense of gains from other sources of sponsored revenues.

That said, as I've muddled through the thousands of pieces of press covering the Nokia-NAVTEQ story, and as I compared NAVTEQs move following Tele Atlas' own to join TomTom [which could lead to a further subsequent buyout by another suitor], I thought perhaps both aren't so great for Americans.  Nokia will be the first to admit their US presence is somewhat challenged—it always has been thanks to deregulation and a myriad of wireless technologies and spectrum in this country beyond GSM. TomTom is the European offline P-Nav leader but struggles against Garmin's leadership in the US. Both Nokia and TomTom don't do well here and their historical and future focus is elsewhere. With CRIB nations representing the bulk of the mobile demand going forward, focus will head in that direction.  What will be left of the hometown?  Is there an opportunity lost, or one yet to emerge?   

Sit-up and take note when the largest mobile operator conglomerate in the world says their long term evolution plans will consider WiMax over legacy GSM communications standards. Vodafone's entrance as the newest member of the WiMax forum is big chicken.  Not only does it send a clear message to the mobile telecom community that they best keep up with the fast paced Internet, but it also lets the big Web know they will not have their lunch eaten.   

In my mobile Location world in the U.S., WiMax presents new, unexplored, and challenging ways of managing and exposing location across a myriad of devices including phones, PCs, personal media players, personal navigation devices, and so on.  We're boldly going where no one has gone before and it's the wild west all over again where there's no standardized way of working with Location.  The challenges are fun challenges.  More fun than say working within the GSM world fixation on secure user plane location [SUPL] standards as GPS rolls out in Europe finally.  Vodafone's WiMax interest entrance makes me second guess the virtue of pursuing a GSM standard that may have a short life if Vodafone concentrates efforts elsewhere.  

Intel, where do you think Location standards should live?  Google, do you care?   

With all the recent hubbub on Google’s potential 700 MHz play, and with Verizon, AT&T, and the CTIA crying foul accusing DC of dole distribution for Silicon Valley welfare, Sprint ‘s composure is quiet—perhaps confident. It should be. Even though some have bashed Sprint criticizing what they suggest is sluggish progress towards the upcoming WiMax launch, building a network takes time, as does the ecosystem strategy around an Open Mobile Platform like WiMax, which will likely rival any network arising from the 700 MHz auction—both in terms of speed as well as openness.

An indicator of Sprint’s confidence arrives today in form of a teaming announcement with Google [despite the noise] to launch a suite of mobility and location-enriched applications that will run across a myriad of connected WiMax devices [not just phones]. It’s an early indication of what to expect from Sprint during this intense build-out phase.  Plus, with LBS apps accounting for 1/3 of total data revenues today up over music and others, it’s also no surprise that Sprint also has plans beyond Google Apps with continued commitment to enable their existing developer community with APIs needed to build broadband mobility and location smarts into applications spanning consumer, business, and government super-group horizontals.  Yep, I'd say Sprint gets it... 

Does the future promise one converged communicator, PC, and personal media player device networked to other smaller, wearable devices in a personal area network, and that dock’s to other larger fixed in-home and in-vehicle communications and infotainment consoles? Intel’s I have seen the future, step into tomorrow Video captures that vision…

While Intel depicts this future vision, Apple's iPhone delivers the vision today and expect version 2 to take it further. Consider the following supporting food for thought on why…

At Home

The ipod is arguably the most successful personal media player in history, with enormously large memory capacity able to store volumes of video and audio consumed on the device directly or on larger screens or audio players via console-docking stations. Extend the docking station to the iPhone with Apple TV, and it can conceivably become an all-in-one set-top-box, gaming console, personal media player, information scheduler, communicator, and beyond—one that goes with you after leaving the home.

In the Vehicle

Some recently dismissed the idea that Apple gains anything by working with Mercedes on an in-vehicle navigation system. Again, the iPod is arguably the most successful personal media player in history, broadcast radio is all but a dead or dying media, and a majority of new vehicles come equipped with iPod connectivity built-in or as available aftermarket accessories. iPod’s are replacing legacy in-vehicle entertainment systems already, so why not navigation systems as well? While I agree it doesn’t make sense for Apple to consider making a dedicated PND or in-dash system for vehicles, it does however make sense for automotive manufacturers to equip vehicles with dedicated iPhone docking stations that couple as A/V media centers and navigation systems.