Garmin disputes Android phone dates, sales in report
updated 03:05 pm EST, Mon December 22, 2008
Garmin disputes report
Garmin announced on Monday that it is disputing the sales figures and product rollout schedules published in a DigiTimes report from the same day. In the report, it was said Garmin will ship 18 million GPS units in 2008, citing the company's Asia Pacific marketing director, Tony An, as the source for the information. The story also had Garmin's Android-powered and GPS-enabled nuvifone be released into the Taiwanese market in the second quarter of 2009, with Android-based handsets coming as early as the second half of 2009. Garmin did not dispute that Android-based handsets are indeed in the pipeline.
Garmin instead simply states that the story contains a number of inaccuracies regarding sales figures and the phones' rollout schedules, but doesn't specify which or if all the reported numbers were inaccurate and did not supply corrected data.
DigiTimes originally said An claimed Garmin's Black Friday sales were higher than expected, but the company has now rejected that claim.
"Black Friday sales from our customers were what we expected and gross margins remain relatively strong," says Garmin CFO and treasurer Kevin Rauckman. “However, the December sales environment is weaker, which we attribute to our retail customers’ desire to exit the year with lower levels of inventory.”
