Blogger and Microsoft employee Dean Reese, strongly urges Microsoft to enter the GPS device and content space by buying one of the players. He writes:
“Garmin and competitor Trimble need a suitor and Microsoft would be a great fit for either company.Why is Microsoft a good fit?
* Microsoft wants and needs to expand their lines of business
* Microsoft has the Microsoft Mobile Smartphone
* Microsoft has a GIS/Mapping platform with the Virtual Earth and MapPoint products
* Garmin’s software can run on the Microsoft Mobile Smartphone platform
* Trimble already runs on the Microsoft Mobile Smartphone platformMicrosoft is hitting on all cylinders and the time is right. Does this seem too simple and logical? Yes.”
Microsoft Subnet blogger Michael Dortch notes that Microsoft seems schizophrenic in the number of faces it presents to its customers from the number of business lines it has. Microsoft is growing into the good old fashioned conglomerate that all-but-died by the end of the 1980’s. If being a digital conglomerate will be good for investors (and there are analysts out there that like what Microsoft is doing, and say that Microsoft is heading toward $42/share ), then why not add GPS to its Smartphone, its Virtual Earth and MapPoint lines? (Perhaps, one day, the technology can go into other mobile products like Zune, too.) Because Microsoft can use the technology in many ways, and because Microsoft has become the definition of a control freak, forget Yahoo (and Ballmer’s latest round of “no comment” about that potential deal .) – Garmin or Trimble could be one of Microsoft’s next acquisition targets.
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