
Rumor has it the world's largest GPS manufacturer is in talks with MediaTek's GPS chipset division. That could mean that Garmin is looking to diversify its GPS chipset suppliers. Garmin currently uses SiRF's high performance StarIII chipset. SiRF has been extremely successful in the handheld GPS market, but recently lost some ground when TomTom switched to Global Locate in their ONE GPS product.
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I think Garmin is coming out with their own high sensitivity GPS receiver that is supposed to be at par with SiRF, will be very interesting to see how true this will be. They no longer show the SiRF GPS receiver but only reflect they are offering high sensitivity GPS receiver so you never know what you will be getting, kind of like their GPS maps with version 8, how fresh of data is it really from NT, and no more mention City Select mapping software which is slowly being phased out, I think the new name is City navigator lite instead. The difference is mostly less attributes and not as much options. Cheaper software is now being used but the name sounds like the more expensive mapping software, calling it City Navigator lite is not going to add more attributes much like calling what was once SiRF GPS receiver now AKA high sensitivity GPS receiver.
Playing with words to save money, how funny.
The term High Sensitivity GPS engine has been around for a few years because many manufacturers including TomTom and Navman don't want you to know what engine it uses and the fact that it isn't the top of the line SiRF III engine or MTK 32 channel gps engine. Garmin are behind the race in producing a GPS engine that would be on par with SiRF III or MTK, it just would not make commercial sense, would increase the cost of their products and no doubt have no been able to keep up with demand anyways, thus outsourced like many manufacturers do. SiRf II/le engines are still available as well as variations of the SiRf III engines, any one of them could be in the Garmin along with MTK 32. IMHO as an end user it wouldn't matter if it was a SiRF III or MTK 32, however, as far as manufacturers are concerned the 25% saving by buying an MTK 32 is very important.