General tech innovation awards are interesting, but what about our little world? In fact, I was quite slack about reporting the various boating innovation awards all last year, and so I’ve compiled a list of all the electronics-related awards in the four competitions I know of:
That’s Charlie Hsu, sales & marketing guy for Alltek Marine Electronics Corp. (AMEC), along with the company’s chief engineer. They were at METS looking for companies interested in distributing their Class B AIS, mentioned here last April. When showing me the unit, Hsu pointed out some yellow colored targets and explained that they were “buddy” boats.
“Oh, you mean like the Simrad AI50’s buddy feature?” said I.
“Exactly like that!,” replied Hsu, laughing.
Then he showed me a new MOB product Alltek is working on, seen below (with the AIS display used to plot MOBs).
Of course I said “Oh, you mean like Raymarine’s LifeTag system?”
“Exactly like!” answered a proud Mr. Hsu.
It’s interesting that Johnson Outdoors, makers of Humminbird electronics, announced the acquisition of GeoNav a few days ago. I’ve long thought that GeoNav gear was noteworthy, as noted recently, but never wrote much about it because it was never marketed in the U.S. The reason? GeoNav was owned by Navionics, which had made the decision some time back not to compete with their many OEM customers—Raymarine, Lowrance, Northstar, etc.—in the States. Now it looks like that restriction is finished and, though I have no idea of Johnson Outdoor’s plan, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some rejiggered GeoNav products come to America. One particularly interesting unit to look for is this GeoNav 3, an amazingly powerful but tiny handheld.
It’s a Panbo first, but this entry is meant only for the various agency and manufacturer personnel who work with the media that covers marine electronics. A hassle they have before the big boat shows is trying to schedule press events that don’t conflict. Often they’ll call each other and/or a geek like me who tries to make every event. That’s why I came up with the idea of an open and easily updated Panbo tentative schedule of FLIBS press events. The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show is just a month off, and some major events are already on the calendar. There’s even a bit of conflict, which is going to happen sometimes regardless. I certainly don’t want to play referee, but am hoping that Panbo can be a neutral and useful source of information. If the idea works OK, I’ll do it again for Miami, starting earlier.
Garmin is making waves beyond its smart seeming autopilot acquisition today. For one thing, a bit of evidence in the incident involving the 15 British Royal Navy detained by Iran is the clever helicopter photo above, in which a wee little Garmin eTrex is being used to prove the ship was in international waters. Garmin was also selected as a new member of Wired magazine’s 40 most innovative companies, at 22 just above Amazon’s current rating, yet. But maybe the most interesting tell is a call I got today from a hedge fund researcher working on the investment premise that Garmin is such a juggernaut that publicly traded competitors like TomTom and Raymarine may be good shorts. I don’t know much, but I don’t think I’d bet on that.
Moments ago Garmin announced that it has acquired Nautamatic Marine Systems, the inventors and manufacturers of what’s arguably the most innovative autopilot system out there. When I first profiled the TR-1 Gladiator in a 2004 PMY column I noted that breaking into this niche has to be really hard as experimentation and testing are difficult and reputations are built over decades. Hell, I think even the Furuno NavPilot has gone slowly, despite the great name and what I understand is very good performance. At any rate, Nautamatic stuck with it, eventually began to prove its technology, and—yeehaa!—just made the big leagues.
Naturally a Gladiator autopilot is going to be a lot more attractive as part of Garmin’s already ambitious Marine Network, both to individuals and boatbuilders, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Garmin engineers help Nautamatic shine up its user interface a bit (though the “Shadow Drive” feature needs none). Of course, the bigger picture here is that Garmin—obviously intent on going toe to toe with Raymarine, Navico, Furuno, etc. over serious recreational boat electronics—just stepped a dite closer, ramping up a competition that I think is good for all of us. It’s also ironic that today I’m finishing up my PMY feature on ideal electronics systems! At least I recommended designing such a system so that it is easily modified or even replaced.
I know I’m beyond the W.Weirdness window, but maybe you need a Monday distraction? Check out brand new MarineBiz online TV. There are lots of curious clips available but search on “Operation Training” and skip right to Part 4 for some work that would make Monty Pyth*n proud. Seriously, though, MarineBizTV is based in Dubai, and Dubai has become a marine industry buzz word. Why? Well, this country is building so much waterfront residential properties, like The Palm Jumeirah, that I’m told it will eventually exceed Florida’s by 50%, and new yachts, selling well already, are expected to number 100,000 in the next 10 years. Marine electronics opportunities…you betcha.
PS. Given that “The Vision of MarineBiz TV is to become the single point of contact and reference for all marine activities and information worldwide,” should I be worried?
PPS. Truly weird: I had a hell of time posting this silly entry, because it turns out that the correct spelling of Monty Pyth*n causes a .cgi error in this blogging software setup, a little joke by some programmer somewhere I guess!
It wasn’t surprising that Jeppesen Marine’s Miami press conference was meatier than Navico’s. Jep’s acquisition of C-Map had been through a many-month due diligence process and had already closed before the boat show. I came away thinking that existing C-Map customers, retail and OEM, have nothing to worry about, and that the products that evolve out of this combination are going to be interesting. For one thing, we were introduced to the new manager of the Recreational division, James Detar—to the left above, with Jeppesen Marine VP Tim Sukle and Nobeltec manager Shepard Tucker. Detar seems evolved for the task; he grew up in a Cape Cod boatyard, then went on to earn an advanced degree in cartography and work at C-Map for some 15 years, first in chart production, then business development. He even speaks fluent Italian. When asked if Jeppesen would change any of C-Map’s many existing OEM relationships, Detar said, very convincingly: “Absolutely not!”
Sukle and Tucker described the overall vision of Jeppesen Marine, which is next generation charts/data/software (not hardware), both for OEM’s and their own products. Thus Nobeltec will help advance C-Map’s plotter OS much like it’s worked backstage on Simrad’s Glass Bridge and certain Northstar products. (I later spoke with a big C-Map OEM, and he’s excited). Tucker also described how Jeppesen is applying its massive resources to a set of Web services that will include facilities for users to share data, including POI info, with each other and the world. That made me smile.
Jeppesen, by the way, has a heck of a history. It didn’t seem to be in the movie (worth watching), but we were told that founder, and early mail pilot, Elrey Jeppesen famously said, “I didn’t do this to make money; I did it to stay alive!”
Just a month after the announcement in Miami, Navico closed its deal to buy Northstar, Navman, and MX Marine. I attended the post-announcement press conference in Miami, and even had a few words with Navico CEO Jens-Thomas Pietralla (above), but I really don’t know how this marine electronics conglomeration will play out. I did hear Pietralla say that he is not terribly concerned about overlapping brands, though the brands may become more “focused”. I’m guessing that may mean Simrad as the high-end yacht (and commercial) brand, costarring B&G particularly in sail, then followed by Northstar, Navman, and Lowrance as you move toward smaller yachts or further inland. But there’s also a promised sharing of technologies, not to mention differences in national tastes and distributing operations, and the unexplained “supply agreement” with Brunswick, to factor in.
I note on the press release that Navico claims 2,800 employees globally, with revenues of close to 350 million dollars, and, besides its headquarters in Lysaker, Norway, it has development and manufacturing facilities in Egersund; Støvring, Denmark; Romsey, UK; Acton, Massachusetts; Tulsa, Okalahoma; Torrance, California; Ensenada, Mexico; and Auckland, New Zealand. Wow. What do you suppose this around-the-clock operation will mean to electronics?
NDI, or Nautical Data International, just announced that it’s selling its exclusive right to produce and license digital versions of Canadian charts back to the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), effective on March 30. It sounds like that’s the end of a long and unpleasant affair I’ve discussed before, but who knows for sure? If you read the Q&A’s, you’ll find that NDI plans to stay in business, and to continue its suits against C-Map and Navionics. I haven’t followed this dispute closely, but have noticed that both those companies are now offering very reasonably priced Canadian charts, especially when compared to NDI’s PC charts. In fact, I know boats that have gone from PC to plotter mainly because of that price difference. Here’s hoping that CHS will make Canadian rasters and ENCs more affordable and easier to use.
