Latin
America Welcomes Garmap
Three companies along with Garmap, the South African
provider of mobile navigation, will deliver mobile
navigation services in Latin America.. Geo Center
S.A. in Chile, Geosistemas in Argentina and ProMaps
in Brazil will launch Garmap for Mobile Online,
powered by Appello’s off-board navigation
platform.
Garmap is a subsidiary of Avnic Holdings which
also operates Garmin Distribution Africa, the
exclusive Garmin distributor in South Africa.
“Latin America shares many characteristics
with South Africa and lessons learnt in the South
African market can be applied to the South American
market”, explained Chris Crozier, CTO at
Garmap.
According to Garmap, “research indicates
that in 2009 Chile saw a 4.1% growth in monthly
sales of navigation-capable phones to around 12,000
units, Argentina saw a 2.8% increase in sales
to around 18,000 units and monthly sales in Brazil
increased by 4.4% to around 150,500 units.”
This move by Garmap in South America is a confirmation
that the Garmin mobile strategy (centered exclusively
around Nuvifone) has not been well received by
their local distributors in the Southern hemisphere.
Two of the three companies signed up by Garmap
are indeed Garmin distributor in their countries.
With the growing presence of TomTom in South
Africa, this is also a good thing for Garmap to
enlarge its activities to other markets and license
the brand developed in South Africa.
In South Africa Garmap started as a distributor
of Garmin products: outdoor and PNDs and established
its own brand for the map data. One year ago the
company branched out to offer its own cell phone-
based navigation system under the Garmap brand
as well as local content and even a lifestyle
paper magazine and website, offering content linked
to its GPS products.
According to Garmap its market share of mobile
navigation is now over 20% of South Africa and
represents more than 600,000 map requests per
month. However, the recent launch of free navigation
on Nokia smartphones is likely to have consequences
for Garmap.
Garmap has also teamed up with mobile navigation
application developer, Sygic, to announce Garmap
for Mobile on iPhone, which, unlike the Appello-based
solution, is on-board and can be used without
network connection. Garmap for Mobile iPhone will
be available for download from the iTunes AppStore
from April.
“With this announcement, Garmap now has
support for the widest range of operating systems
and mobile phones, including Blackberry, Symbian,
Samsung Proprietary, Android, Windows Mobile and,
now, iPhone”, said Andrew McHenry, head
of mobile at Garmap.
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