Unless anyone here is privy to the information discussed in Garmin's
boardroom, we'll never know for sure. I think it was just that the price was
right for a buy-out. UPS wanted out of that business for a while.
Eliminating competition was probably one of many factors that played into
that decision.

Marco Leon
N36616

"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
Mike Rapoport wrote:
UPS was not Garmin's "main competitor". UPS had insignificant revenue,
didn't make money and really had to sell. Everybody complains about the
"loss of competition" but very few were buying UPS's products. The
choice
was being aquired or disappearing.

The fact that UPS-AT was in bad shape (I don't know that they were,
but I'll take that as a given for the moment) doesn't take away from
the fact that they were Garmin's main competition.

Is there anybody else out there that was competing with Garmin for the
GA avionics market than UPS? Narco is dead. Northstar has pulled out
of aviation. King seems to have given up developing new products.
Collins is concentrating on the commercial market.

The sad fact is that the GA avionics market just isn't big enough to
support more than one major manufacturer, and Garmin seems to have
won.