Magellan has had quite a bit of success with their 7” models; I’m currently testing the RoadMate 9055 and “tablet” popped into my head when I first held it. My second thought was, how are they going to compete against tablets? Sure, price is one way, but I suspect that we will quickly see Android tablet prices plummet. What then?
Well, the other shoe dropped this morning. Magellan parent company MiTAC has long teased us with hybrid PC/navigators that never made it past the concept stage. But today at CeBIT, they unveiled four new Android tablets for the ODM market, and I’m betting we’ll see some of these show up with Magellan, Navman and Mio labels on them. They are the:
- Ulmo (7”, pictured below)
- Valar 7 (7”, pictured at bottom)
- Valar 10 (10”)
- Zeus (6”, pictured above)
Here’s a PDF link with more info, but a couple of things stand out. The Ulmo is IPX7 waterproof and “drop resistant.” Is that the sound of geocachers drooling? Meanwhile the Zeus has two GPS receivers, “so it’s now possible to get a GPS reception whichever way the device is held.” Um, I didn’t know orientation had any affect on the chipset! Other than that bizarre line, these look pretty interesting, but it’s still going to be an uphill battle against the iPad and countless Android tablets sporting Google Maps Navigation.
About Rich Owings
If the Ulmo comes out with Android Market support, sunlight-readable screen, GPS, and reasonable battery life, plus a reasonable price ($400 or less), I’ll buy it in a heartbeat.
Well, it will probably have Android Market support. Not sure you’ll get the rest of your wish list though!
Why would Magellan want to join that market? Even though their parent company makes MANY other things doesn’t mean that they will need to sell everything they can make. Product assortment is the decision of product management teams and I’m pretty sure they know this is not their playground. If they made such a silly move, it would cost them a pretty penny.
Rumors like this get people all excited, but rumors are… rumors.
Why would they not? Why would you buy a 7″ Magellan when you could buy a tablet with WiFi for nearly the same amount, and a low cost on-board maps app?
I’d say file under speculation rather than runors.
I don’t get why smartphone/tablet manufacturers release certain products to a select carrier. Wouldn’t they gain more by releasing it to all major carriers? For instance I have a contract through Sprint and in order to get one of these I would have to pay a bunch of money to cancel my contract.