Garmin has always aggressively pushed their "proprietary" solutions
over open or industry standards. However, they are beginning to get
their lunch money stolen by more innovative companies in the consumer
electronics market where they have more competition. They were also
getting hammered in the automotive OEM market until they were forced by
the larger auto manufacturers to cut their margins.

I would expect Garmin to aggressively protect the high-margin aviation
business for some time to come. Why else do you think they would buy
UPSAT, when they had the G1000 cooking in the lab??? Obviously to
defeat a competitor on the value end. They don't want to be foreced to
reduce margins in one of their more lucrative markets! Who's their
competition now?

If Avidyne or Bendix/King were smart, they would steal Garmin's
engineering staff and produce a better value system, but even if they
took Garmin's talent today, it would be a few years to introduce new
aviation products.

I feel burned by Garmin after 'investing' in a GNS 530, after many,
many conversations with their engineers on the future of the box
several years ago. As it turns out, Garmin has basically yanked most of
their avionics line guys to dedicate on the G1000 (which has had some
pretty serious issues to resolve, but didn't stop the marketing hype.)
WAAS upgrades for the 430/530 are now more than 18 months overdue from
their original announcements. Then again, Garmin has always attempted
to secure market by hyping products, then continually delaying
introduction (witness the iQue...) to keep people 'sitting on the
fence' rather than buy the competitor's product that may actually be
ready.