The Magellan RoadMate iPhone app (iTunes link) was introduced this weekend. It includes text-to-speech, lane assist and in-app music controls, and runs $79.99. Magellan also says they have a car kit coming (pic below) that has an integrated GPS receiver and will accommodate the iPhone or iPod touch.
Meanwhile, us Droid users are left suffering with a paucity of navigation apps (and few topo apps too). We get Google Maps Navigation beta (emphasis on beta) for free, but few other choices. Will Magellan, TomTom and Navigon step up to the plate, or ignore a huge market due to Google’s giveway nav app? Time will tell, I suppose. Regardless, I’ll be testing and reporting on some Droid apps soon, but not until we get past Black Friday. More on that soon.
About Rich Owings
My guesses? Navigon, yes. Magellan, probably. TomTom, no. Wildcard, Garmin. Even tho they have stated “no interest” in mobile phone apps, Android might be an exception.
Having seen the Droid Google Maps app, I’m unclear on the economic incentives for the mainstream GPS players. Caveat: I did just one point-to-point navigation. But it was slick.
I’m not sure one can call Droid a “huge market”. Earlier devices running 1.5 / 1.6 are not necessarily a good target, and the number of 2.0 devices in the wild are dwarfed by Palm Pre, for example, to name another device with free GPS that isn’t necessarily being served by third party manufacturers.
@Scott – Forecasts are for Android to soon be the number two platform, surpassing even WinMo.
@Bart – The incentive is a big market stuck with a crappy beta app. So far I’m not that impressed. being sent the wrong way down a one way street didn’t help.
@gatorguy – I sure hope you’re right. I’d love to see several of them jump in.
>wrong way down a one way street
Interesting. Garmin made a similar point in a slide for its earnings call. It showed what appeared to be Google Maps Street View “heading” into a dead end road. I wonder: is the problem with the app or the underlying data.
Pretty sure it’s weak data. I would hope their routing algorithm wouldn’t do that!
Google Maps SUCKS!! Where I live (Milpitas, CA, in Google’s home area) it makes a ton of mistakes, places homes on the wrong side of rail tracks, and the turn-by-tur directions it printed out for a San Jose address about 15 miles away were LAUGHABLE! They looked like the merger of directions to two different places, and would have gotten me LOST if I didn’t know the area batter. Wake up people, the great Google is turning into a bamboozle…
Google doesn’t make maps, they get/buy them from TeleAtlas–and that company’s maps are inferior in the US to Garmin’s Navteq maps.
I agree that GM’s routing algorithm is often poor, especially for short distances; I’d like to have a choice at least between the shortest and the fastest modes… what they often produce is neither.
Google stopped using Tele Atlas about a month ago and now use their own data.
Magellan… nothing like second rate exclusives. Thats like Bresnan getting a partnership with Cellular One, its a joke. iPhone would have something with Garmin, not Magellan.