The Kansas City Star reports that GPS firm Garmin has abandoned its initiative with ASUS to offer Garmin-branded mobile phones, although the two companies will continue a partnership to offer Garmin GPS software on ASUS-branded phones. The shift opens the door for Garmin to offer its GPS software on other platforms such as Apple's iOS.
"We obviously didn't want to compete against ourselves," Myers said.
But now that it's getting out of the cell-phone manufacturing business, Garmin is exploring the development of software that could work in Apple and RIM devices. Myers said it was unclear when the company might introduce applications for the different operating systems.
Garmin has been one of the only holdouts on the iPhone among the major GPS companies, with others like TomTom and Magellan embracing the platform for their turn-by-turn services with an array of applications.
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