Garmin Ltd, more commonly known simply as ‘Garmin’, has become one of the leaders in the market when it comes to technology and they now have a number of different products in the industry. After starting in 1989 as ‘ProNav’, the company’s very first product was a $2,500 GPS unit and just two years later their first customer was the US Army. After rebranding as ‘Garmin’ (a mixture of both owner’s names Gary Burrell and Min H Kao), they very quickly saw success and were posting sales figures of over $100 million by the mid-nineties.
The positives continued for Garmin into the 21st Century and sales reached a whopping $230 million with profits of over $60 million. Even a decade ago in 2006, sales were still on the rise and were thought to be around, $1.77 billion. Now, Garmin has a whole host of different products appealing to a number of different audiences which all contribute to a yearly sales figure of around $2.9 billion. With a slogan of ‘We’ll Take You There’, Garmin now has over 10,000 employees and is constantly investing and therefore paving the way for future technologies.
In 2016, Garmin now produce all sorts of GPS systems, satnavs, sports watches, sports trackers, and even once produced software exclusively for Windows. Since then, Apple has joined in and now uses the software for its operating systems. Garmin has laid out a number of ‘perspectives’ which include their main mission which is to make simple products from complicated technology that ‘enhance’ lives. Furthermore, they also promise to make peoples lives more convenient whether it is through their satnavs, sports watches, or any other of their products.
Through the years, Garmin has been rewarded with a number of awards and has been praised for their hard work in the technology industry. For a company that is less than thirty years old, Garmin has well and truly changed the way we look at GPS products and has introduced them to places we never thought they would fit. For example, most mobile phones are now fitted with some form of GPS technology as are triathlon wrist watches and other sports watches; there is even now a golf watch that offers a bird’s eye view of each hole to help with performance.
As the technology industry moves forward, you can almost guarantee that Garmin will be there in amongst the other big names pushing as much as possible. With technology moving forward faster than ever before, nobody really knows what sort of future is on the way in terms of gadgets and useful devices but as long as we are in the hands of the likes of Garmin, it looks as though we have a lot to look forward to.