You're visiting Barcelona and looking for a good place to have dinner. What if you could find a restaurant nearby, and then instantly check with your friends around the world to see if any of them have eaten there? That's one of the services that could soon be available to customers of Garmin, one of the world's largest makers of personal navigation devices.
On June 26, Garmin, which is based in Olathe, Kan., announced it had inked a global deal with Amsterdam-based GyPSii, a geo-location and mobile social-networking provider. GyPSii's software, which includes a friend-finder as well as functions for geographic searching, directions, and mapping, will be bundled into future navigation devices made by Garmin.
GyPSii, founded by former Netscape executive Dan Harple, offers what analysts say is a unique blend -- something like a combination of Facebook and TripAdvisor, with some other location-based services thrown in. Other Web 2.0 services, such as those on offer from Nokia's Ovi, Buzzd and Loop'd, provide some of these elements, but none offers them all, says Ian Chard, an analyst at tech consultancy Jupiter Research.
Handsets Get the Mapping Bug
Garmin isn't saying yet which of its future devices will use GyPSii. But analysts expect the company to bundle the software in the Nuvifone, its first planned consumer phone, which will contain a navigation system. Somewhat similar in appearance to Apple's iPhone, the Nuvifone, which has a large screen, is expected to ship in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
Sales of personal navigation devices have surged in recent years as consumers use mapping technology and GPS signals to find their way around. But cell-phone makers such as Nokia, which purchased mapping technology vendor Navteq, are now incorporating navigation technology into handsets, putting pressure on the likes of Garmin to respond.
Location-Aware Services
Canalys, a tech consultancy in...

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