Overland Park, Kansas based Internet telephone provider Nuvio Corp. is doing the suing. It doesn't like Garmin using "Nuvi" in any of its device names. Nuvio wants payment for past infringement. No comment from Garmin.

- IntoMobile
AP story

A researcher at Chrysler told me that navigational systems in cars have an 80%-20% rule, only it's more like 95%-5%. 95% of the time gps is used by 5% of the people, and the majority of those folks are salesmen, and on the road most of the time. 95% of the time we get into our car, we know how to get to where we are going, and don't need directions. This may be changing as features like "best route" and "congestion avoidance" are added, but still seems to ring true.

- Leslie Rule writing at Media Shift Idea Lab (a PBS blog)

The name says it all. AdNav refers to itself as a GPS Solutions Marketing Company. The idea is to subsidize satnav distribution by hotels, car rental agencies, airlines and make money by offering ads on the devices to local businesses. The platform is called Boomerang and it allows the partner to customize the data offered. Among the offerings are weather, directions, Internet access, city guides. Among the partners are Tele Atlas, CustomWeather, Ask and others. I didn't see any listing of who's advertising yet.

While very clever, my sense is that regular business travelers will be in the habit (soon) of using their phones for such things. Vacationers are a more likely target, but they'll have to learn of the offering before they pick up the NeverLost enabled car at Hertz.

via SmartCompany (Australia)

Garmin had its best quarter ever (pr), but things are not that bright:

- prices for GPS devices are down
- margins are down
- there's no carrier yet for the nuviphone
- prices fell after conference call

- Forbes
- ZDnet Blog

"Many of the services [at Mobile World Congress] put the emphasis on finding your friends, not finding your way, as GPS evolves into more of a social tool."

- Peter Sayer at InfoWorld

TomTom Home got better today. Geekzone offers details.

First off users can share goodies like voices, routes, POIs, etc.

Second, they can rate the content.

Third, there's now automatic update of content already downloaded: "if someone updates a POI set of favourite restaurants, their changes would automatically be sent out to TomTom HOME users who have previously downloaded that set."

Map Share got updates, too. It's possible to request updates based on areas of interest (by country/region) to save space. There's also "a status indicator which keeps users informed on how up to date their maps are."

TomTom is doing everything right to create a community around its nav device. I can't wait to see how this plays out once Tele Atlas is involved.

- via Jalopnik