How Garmin Turned the Death of GPS Into a $7 Billion Empire

For a few years, Garmin seemed almost synonymous with the little GPS unit stuck to your windshield. Then smartphones put turn-by-turn navigation into something everyone already carried. That should have been disastrous for Garmin. Instead, Garmin survived the collapse of the standalone GPS market and eventually became more than twice as large as it was at the height of the nüvi boom. This is the story of how Garmin went from specialist GPS equipment, to one of the defining consumer gadgets of the 2000s, to a much broader company built around fitness, outdoor, aviation, marine and other specialized electronics. From the nüvi and the rise of portable navigation, to the iPhone, Google Maps, the nüvifone, Forerunner, Edge and fēnix, this is how Garmin survived the disappearance of the product most people remember it for.