"N2SX" wrote in message
oups.com...
I agree with you, mike. I would add, though, that Garmin paid for UPS
mostly to get rid of their primary competition. Even if they can the
480, the buy was probably worth it to their bottom line in the long
run. It is just hard for me to imagine the same company putting out
two essentially identical products, with the additional production
costs that entails. But all this is just very uneducated speculation,
so I'll shut up on the topic now. Just wondered what others thought.
If you doubt my information, please give Electronic Flight a call at
866-234-2359 and ask them about it.

Elton
N2SX


Actually UPS AT wasn't a meaningful competitor, they didn't make money and
revenue was about $40MM a year (from memory). They probably would never
have been since they were owned by a company focused on package delivery.
The big reasons for buying UPS was to aquire a lot of engineers with
avionics certification experience to get G1000 to the market and to aquire
the ADS-B intellectual property.

There really isn't much additional cost to put out two products once the
board assembly is programmed and debugged All this stuff is low volume
anyway. Garmin has kept products in production much longer than planned
when the market wanted them. An example is the GPS12 series. If you look
at Garmin's whole product line (automotive, recreation, marine ect) you will
find many niche products.

I don't doubt that the guy at Electronic Flight said what you say he said, I
just have reason to believe differently.

Mike
MU-2