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Garmin’s Market for GPS Taken by Smartphones Garmin was once one of the world’s hottest growth companies—“the next Apple,” according to some stock pickers. In 2007 the company, the world’s top seller of GPS devices for car dashboards and boat cockpits, doubled its sales on what seemed like unquenchable consumer demand for its location-finding gadgets. Then smartphones happened. Not only have smartphones seen record-beating adoption among consumers (see “Are Smart Phones Spreading Faster than Any Technology in Human History?”) The effects on Garmin’s business have been withering. Hardest hit have been Garmin’s sales of GPS devices for vehicle dashboards, also its biggest line of business. Even so, Garmin has fought a successful rear-guard action by grabbing business from other GPS firms, launching top-shelf products for sportsmen and sailors, and diversifying. All that has served to cushion what the company calls an unstoppable decline in demand for stand-alone GPS devices. Garmin didn’t think phones posed much of a threat early on.