On a somewhat tangential topic...
A few weeks back, I was working a booth at the Mid-American Truck Show. In the course of speaking with many different OEM's, I had a chance to speak with one of the guys at Garmin (they had a particularly large booth at the show, with a lot of items on display).
We started off discussing their Dezl line of truck nav units, but after a while the conversation turned to the Zumo line. He confirmed that the reason for dropping the Sirius/XM capability from the old 595 series was because of prohibitively expensive licensing (he claimed that Sirius changed the licensing so much that it would add over $200 to the existing price of a Zumo unit), and that the reason for the switch to capacitive touchscreens for the XT was due primarily to customer demand.
I went over to the Garmin booth. Naturally, they had all of their Dezl line on display (it was the Mid-American Truck Show, after all), but they also had their other product offerings on display, including their fitness line. But I'll tell you this - I got the distinct impression that almost zero attention was being given to their Zumo line. Hardly anyone there knew anything about it, other than it exists.
I walked away from there with the sense that it wouldn't be surprising in any way if Garmin stopped making bike-specific nav units within the next 5 years. No one said those words to me, mind you; it was just a gut-level feeling.
A few weeks back, I was working a booth at the Mid-American Truck Show. In the course of speaking with many different OEM's, I had a chance to speak with one of the guys at Garmin (they had a particularly large booth at the show, with a lot of items on display).
We started off discussing their Dezl line of truck nav units, but after a while the conversation turned to the Zumo line. He confirmed that the reason for dropping the Sirius/XM capability from the old 595 series was because of prohibitively expensive licensing (he claimed that Sirius changed the licensing so much that it would add over $200 to the existing price of a Zumo unit), and that the reason for the switch to capacitive touchscreens for the XT was due primarily to customer demand.
I went over to the Garmin booth. Naturally, they had all of their Dezl line on display (it was the Mid-American Truck Show, after all), but they also had their other product offerings on display, including their fitness line. But I'll tell you this - I got the distinct impression that almost zero attention was being given to their Zumo line. Hardly anyone there knew anything about it, other than it exists.
I walked away from there with the sense that it wouldn't be surprising in any way if Garmin stopped making bike-specific nav units within the next 5 years. No one said those words to me, mind you; it was just a gut-level feeling.