Decline in sat-nav sales - John Lewis pull PNDs from shelves

[Darren]

With sales of dedicated in-car sat-nav plummeting, high street retailer John Lewis has taken the decision to stop stocking them in-store.

Smartphone navigation has become the norm for most users and many more cars now have competent built-in navigation so it's perhaps not a surprise that sales of dedicated portable navigation devices such as those from TomTom and Garmin have been hard hit.

Once the must-have accessory, the rise of the smartphone with its vast array of free and paid for navigation applications, and the prevalence of factory fit systems means dedicated devices are no longer sought after.

So now they sit at the top of one list their manufacturers would not wish to be on, the list of items being "left behind" in John Lewis's 2017 annual retail report.

Source: John Lewis

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Darren Griffin

[sussamb]

In car satnavs have a long way to go to be as competent or as cheap as PNDs but I suspect that won't worry the vast majority of users. It's a bit like cameras, many simply use their smartphones but the experts use stand alone cameras
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Where there's a will ... there's a way.

[junior]

Well if the guy in the photo follows the satnav he's going to be in trouble

[SimonJump]

Hmm - 800rpm and 65mph - Either crap acceleration or an amazing powerplant!

[Snudge]

I've had my OneXL for 10 years and it's been very good but the reason I would not update it is the fact that I can't use TYRE to plots routes on PC and transfer them to latest TomTom device.

There have been many comments on here about the lack of this feature so how many customers have they lost like me?

I now use CoPilot on my phone and it's very easy to add waypoints to customise the route. Also, on my motorbike the screen is brighter.

(sussamb - I expect you will say buy a Garmin!)

[Skumba]

I use my TT 5200 Wifi in lieu of the VERY GOOD (but infuriating) satnav in my car (2015 Citroen Grand C4 Picasso) because the car Satnav is such a pain in the exterior to program or operate that I would be breaking things in frustration trying to tell it where to take me. After over 15,000 miles like this I have also discovered many instances where the car and my TT don't agree, and in 7 out of 10 times the car is wrong.
I have TT on my phone but I don't use it because Mr Plod would just LURVE to catch me touching my phone to shut it up or other function allied to SATNAV. Touching a SATNAV is not illegal (YET..!!) and can generally be done easier, and safer, than the same action on a smartphone.
When driving a hire car, or any other, at least I have all my saved routes and preferences etc. and the ease of not having to figure out how the satnav in the different vehicle works before begiining to use it.
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IPAQ H2210 1993.... GO LIVE 1005 Europe 2011, 1005 Camper 2015, 5200 WFi 2016 and TT still can't get metric speed limit info right in the UK. 70mph is NOT 115kmh. It is 113 as my old IPAQ knew so well!

[mistersaxon]

Just got a TomTom 6200 wifi model (so I can avoid draining the phone and running afoul of the LAW) and oh boy is it SLOW. Once you are navigating it mostly keeps up but before you set off the menus and so on are just so unresponsive. Now I understand that battery life could be an issue in some cases but generally it isn't so WHY USE SUCH A CRAPPY CPU? Unless it's bad code of course, but with Tomtom how could it be?

The unit itself is big, bright, loud and convenient - and my car doesn't have built-in satnav so this works well for me. It supports POIs (via import through tomtom drive) and also has traffic and cameras for the life of the unit (which is estimated to be 3 years it seems?) and all that makes the Tomtom Go Mobile app look a bit inadequate. And it will hilariously read out my text messages as well, which can be annoying but is generally useful.
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<br>
Rich.
Kit: TomTom iPhone WEurope on iPhone6s+ / iPad Pro
w/ Interphone BT headset on a Honda Blackbird (should change this really - the bike, not the headset)

[Snudge]

[MaFt]

[sussamb]

[WWKH]

Interesting reading the comments. A thought occurred to me what about getting updated accurate notifications of the dreaded enforcement cameras?? I use PocketGPSWORLD to update them and load them to my Garmin Nuvi. I also use Waze which is quite good

[Kremmen]

Given that Halfords and Argos are cheaper I'm not surprised JL have trouble shifting them.

Headline 'false news' rules though.
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DashCam:
Viofo A119 V3

[Skumba]

We've had this conversation and I thought it was agreed that the law only applied to handheld phones? - so a phone in a holder is regarded the same as a mounted sat nav

You are probably correct Smudge and Sussamb, but that doesn't take into account Mr/Ms Plod when he/she is down on his/her quota of catches - not that such a thing exists of course... I'm just too chicken to test it.[/quote]
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IPAQ H2210 1993.... GO LIVE 1005 Europe 2011, 1005 Camper 2015, 5200 WFi 2016 and TT still can't get metric speed limit info right in the UK. 70mph is NOT 115kmh. It is 113 as my old IPAQ knew so well!

[NukeThemAll]

Interesting....although I have an old TT PND (GO LIVE) I've not used it for many years, because (a) TT's prices for updating the maps are high (b) I've graduated to TT GO on my Android phone, which is faster at calculating routes and re-routing than my PND. And I sometimes use Google Navigation, which in its latest version works just fine. And 2 bonuses: I can transfer my own POI set to TT GO app, and using the SendToGPS app I can use Google search and send the location to the TT GO app.

Our built-in VW car Sat Nav (no choice, included in the trim level) is just about OK, but compared to phone/app it's slooow and unintuitive to use, often produces non-optimal routes, and when the 3 years is up, will be crazily expensive to update. Its good points? - it will link to my phone and get live digital traffic and also use google search.

Also see the trend for many car manufacturers to include Apple Car Play and Android Auto (and Mirrolink) so that drivers can use their own tech.

Yup, can't see PNDs lasting many more years.....
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TT GO app on Android Phone

[TheGurkha]

Because I can move it from vehicle to vehicle, and from works pool car to pool car, and take all my custon POIs with me.

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