David Ritblatt #1, the MEJ interview

Today I did talk with David Ritblatt, president of Brunswick New Technologies Marine Electronics (BNTME). While he delivered no scoops about the future corporate home of Northstar/Navman/MX Marine, he was quite persuasive about how healthy his division is…and he was funny. But the details of all that will have to wait until Monday. Today I’ll just kid him a bit about his just published interview in Marine Electronics Journal (the NMEA trade publication pictured above). You see his predictions about the future of marine electronics might seem almost as faulty as mine in light of Brunswick’s decision to sell its marine electronics assets. For instance, right at the beginning of the interview he says,  “We [Brunswick] are integrating engines—Cummins-MercCruiser—so the next step obviously is to integrate electronics…We work with them [Brunswick boat builders] to integrate our electronics better in the dashboard.” Then later, talking about the concerns of electronics dealers, “They see what Brunswick is doing. They see Raymarine is hooking up with Volvo or Yamaha. They see Simrad is buying Lowrance. I call it ‘polarization’. Camps are starting to be formed.” That’s sort of what I was thinking too, at least until last week. In fact, Ritblatt stands by his predictions and still thinks that his electronics will be closely integrated into Brunswick boats (and other builders too). More on Monday, including the humor.