Gps - Why So Little Memory?

[+apersson850]

If anyone of you have opened up a unit, and looked at what an SD card socket looks like, you may understand why they are reluctant, at Garmin, to install such bulky things in units like the Vista C, or perhaps even the 60CS.

 

My iQues have SD slots, but they have a good form factor for that (rather big and flat). Now when mini-SD are available, we may see that in a GPS in the future.

On the other hand, Garmin has shown that they now do consider adding much more built-in memory, like in the Quest 2, which has well over 2 GB of map memory, and comes with an entire City Select product loaded into this memory from the factory.

[Major Catastrophe]

For the amount of money you pay for these high end GPS's, you would think having at least 2 or 3 GB of memory would be standard.

Actually, I would expect the price to be much higher if more memory were included. Besides, SD cards are really cheap. Ask me about the Mac Plus I had; the one where I paid $100 per megabyte for 4 MB of RAM. (How many people would pay $100,000 for a 1 GB SD card? ) And remember that you can have multiple SD cards, for versatility you wouldn't have with just onboard RAM.

[+JohnnyVegas]

you may understand why they are reluctant, at Garmin, to install such bulky things in units like the Vista C, or perhaps even the 60CS.

 

Bulky? The explorist 400, 500 and 600 are not bulky and they all have SD card slots.

[+Airmapper]

SD cards are amazing, I have 512 MB in a chip about the size of a postage stamp. A person could probably put the entire US on about 10 of them.

[tossedsalad]

There is no good technical or cost issue with adding a memory card slot to a GPS design. If they are building a completely lowest possible cost unit they might leave it out for cost reasons. The cost of adding an SD connector is less than a dollar which would add somewhere around $2 to $3 to the selling price of the unit (or reduce the profit by $1), clearly not a significant factor for $150 unit.

 

I believe it is a marketing issue. They want GPS units to sell at various multiple price points and they have to distinguish them by the feature set. It is not completely a matter of the cost of the feature, but rather how valuable it is to the customer (how much will they pay for it). A good example of this is VCRs. Now they are commodities and they all cram as much "value" into as low a price as possible. But at one time they were much pricier. I saw three models in a store with three very different prices. Turns out the main difference was the number of programs you could record and the time period you could set it up for; 1 program over 5 days, 2 programs over 7 days and 3 programs over 14 days. Guess what, the feature set was selected with a programming jumper inside the box! The boxes were all the same except for the model number and trim. So the $150 difference in price was based on features and increased profit, not increased cost.

 

I can assure you that the high end GPS receivers provide tons of extra profit for the manufacturers that is dispproportionate to the increased cost. Two options that should never be options are the SD memory card slot and the serial or USB interface with upload capability. These two together would only add $5 to the selling price. But they want to keep that value separate so they can charge a lot more for the higher units. Even my friend's yellow eTrex has a serial port, but he didn't get a cable, that's extra.

 

The Lowrance iFinder GO is a perfect example of what you can make if you toss out the marketing mindset. They wanted to make the lowest priced unit on the market. But they decided to add MAPS! Obviously adding the maps costs them nearly nothing or they could not have afforded to include that feature in the low end unit. They also included a serial port for NMEA outputs. But oddly enough they did not provide upload capability of either waypoints or maps!!! There may be some reason for this such as the chip set having a fixed function. But I expect they just plain wanted to save something for their higher priced units.

 

I am working with GPS now and I might just buy an iFinder GO to take apart. I expect I could learn a few things from it about parts costs.

[+Airmapper]

This is probably the case with my AirMap, I had to send it in several times for repairs. Each time I'd receive a new unit, fresh off the assembly line. If these units were so expensive for them to make, wouldn't they be a little less free hearted, possibly reusing parts off the old one, or working on the unit itself. I read the reports of the techs that worked on it, a few of them claimed there was no problem, I still got a new unit. They only cost the company very little to produce, I bet we are talking a 500% or more resale rate increase by the time it gets to the customer.

 

AirMap 500, probably costs the company about $10 or less to make. Retailed for $500.

[+geognerd]

SD cards are amazing, I have 512 MB in a chip about the size of a postage stamp. A person could probably put the entire US on about 10 of them.

I can't find the topic or remember the exact details, but I thought someone was able to get the entire US onto a 1GB SD card. The topic was about how someone made some changes in a file to allow maps to be transferred in chunks larger than 64MB, and they changed it to 1GB. The maps only took up like 900-something MB. I wish I could find the topic to link to.

 

Edit: This topic isn't the one I was thinking of, but close.

Edited October 19, 2005 by geognerd

[tossedsalad]

This is probably the case with my AirMap, I had to send it in several times for repairs. Each time I'd receive a new unit, fresh off the assembly line. If these units were so expensive for them to make, wouldn't they be a little less free hearted, possibly reusing parts off the old one, or working on the unit itself. I read the reports of the techs that worked on it, a few of them claimed there was no problem, I still got a new unit. They only cost the company very little to produce, I bet we are talking a 500% or more resale rate increase by the time it gets to the customer.

 

AirMap 500, probably costs the company about $10 or less to make. Retailed for $500.

I don't think there is that much of a difference in cost vs. selling price. But if you made a typo and meant $100 rather than $10, you might be closer to the right number. I don't know what an Airmap is, but if it has a larger screen than the typical GPS, I would price it closer to $150, possibly $200 in manufacturing cost.

 

I would guess the low end iFinder GO costs about $35 to build. I don't think there is a lot of profit in this unit. But I would love to tear one apart and see just what chips they use.

 

I was browsing the Magellan site looking for info on the new 210 and I found the that entire Magellan/SporTrak series uses Quadrifilar helix antennas. That explains why my Merigold gets better reception under tree cover. I think that also explains the larger size of the unit, I believe the quad helix antennae are larger than the patch ones.

[rynd]

The Airmap is an ifinder for the aviation market.

[+JohnnyVegas]

This is probably the case with my AirMap, I had to send it in several times for repairs. Each time I'd receive a new unit, fresh off the assembly line. If these units were so expensive for them to make, wouldn't they be a little less free hearted, possibly reusing parts off the old one, or working on the unit itself. I read the reports of the techs that worked on it, a few of them claimed there was no problem, I still got a new unit. They only cost the company very little to produce, I bet we are talking a 500% or more resale rate increase by the time it gets to the customer.

 

AirMap 500, probably costs the company about $10 or less to make. Retailed for $500.

I don't think there is that much of a difference in cost vs. selling price. But if you made a typo and meant $100 rather than $10, you might be closer to the right number. I don't know what an Airmap is, but if it has a larger screen than the typical GPS, I would price it closer to $150, possibly $200 in manufacturing cost.

 

I would guess the low end iFinder GO costs about $35 to build. I don't think there is a lot of profit in this unit. But I would love to tear one apart and see just what chips they use.

 

I was browsing the Magellan site looking for info on the new 210 and I found the that entire Magellan/SporTrak series uses Quadrifilar helix antennas. That explains why my Merigold gets better reception under tree cover. I think that also explains the larger size of the unit, I believe the quad helix antennae are larger than the patch ones.

I would price it closer to $150, possibly $200 in manufacturing cost.

That may be the production cost per unit as far as parts and production line labor. You also have to figure in the cost of R&D, then the marketing cost, advertising, product liability insurance and sales commissions, it adds up quickly. Lets no forget we as consumers do not hear about all the products that the manufactures have produced a small quantity that have never made it to market, this can be a very expensive part of the R&D process.

[+scott9282]

As far as the actual cost of the materials used in the manufacture of GPSr units, what are we talking about here? A small amount of plastic, some silicon for the various chipsets, and some solder and wiring. All told, over the entire production run, maybe that $10 estimate is too high.

 

Now, what are you actually paying for? The knowledge base that went into the construction and design of the unit. The talent of the engineering staff, and so on. You are paying for the knowledge.

 

Sort of like the old joke: A printing press breaks down. The owner of the print shop calls a repairman in. The repairman looks at the printing press for about 10 minutes, goes to his toolbox and takes out a small hammer. The repairman reaches into the press, taps a couple of times, throws the switch and the press comes to life.

 

The repairman hands the bill to the print shop owner. "$505! But all you did was tap it with a hammer."

 

The repairman tells the owner that the five dollars is for the hammer tap, the five hundred is for knowing where to tap.

 

You are paying for knowledge. And in the case of the Airmapper that was replaced with a new unit, that is more cost effective for Lowrance than trying to repair the returned unit. Plus they create good customer service for very little cost. That's just good business. The returned unit either gets broken down for parts, scrapped or possibly repaired at some future point and sold as refurbed. No real loss to the company, and good feelings from the consumer.

[+sTeamTraen]

The reason why you only get 64MB or whatever in a GPSr vs more in a PDA is that this is static (flash) memory. Many PDAs have regular dynamic RAM as their built-in memory, which loses everything if the battery runs flat for more than a certain amount of time.

 

Now, as for why you get 64 rather than 128, marketing certainly comes into it, in two ways: the relative positioning of different models (I find Garmin's range particularly labyrinthine), but also the price point. Adding $1 to the cost of components typically adds $10 to the final product's list price. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

 

Simple flash memory cards are less susceptible to this 10:1 markup because it's basically just the chip, so there's less other R&D cost to amortise. But a flash card reader slot in a handheld unit would add the same amount, or more, to the overall cost, as integrating the flash onto the unit's board.

 

20 years ago I worked on a project to make a weighing scale for butchers' stores (etc) that could talk to the cache register. We spent a lot of time getting our code (written in Forth, for small size) to fit into a 16K ROM rather than a 32K ROM, as it saved about $2.50 on chips, which made $25 off the final price. For a $200 unit this was a big consideration.

[+Airmapper]

You are paying for knowledge. And in the case of the Airmapper that was replaced with a new unit, that is more cost effective for Lowrance than trying to repair the returned unit. Plus they create good customer service for very little cost. That's just good business. The returned unit either gets broken down for parts, scrapped or possibly repaired at some future point and sold as refurbed. No real loss to the company, and good feelings from the consumer.

This is what I thought. It did work BTW, I do respect Lowrance for giving me a new unit instead of me getting the old one back and always wondering if it would fail again. (I could start a whole thread on that story, it has a happy ending though.)

 

An AirMap 500 is like rynd said, an I-Finder Pro with an Aviation mode. I assume that all the parts, with a few exceptions, are identical to an I-finder, which sells for much less. You are paying for the Aviation features, they cost just as much to produce as the cheaper units. And companies buy in bulk, if each individual part was given a price, it would be very small by the time the division was over. I doubt a GPS costs much more to manufacture than a TV remote.

 

As for SD cards, I have 4 states with TOPO, POI, and all other data on my 512MB, I also have a few lake charts, several data files, and lots of room left over. I also have a 64MB SD with the aviation mapping, I would move it to the bigger card, but it is security locked to the 64MB. I hate switching the cards, but that will come to an end when I update the Aviation mapping to the other card.

[+Thrak]

I'm a computer geek so I was totally amazed when I went to purchase a GPSr and found that they had such limited memory. Memory is CHEAP. There is no valid reason - other than greed - for Garmin to have such pathetic amounts of memory in their units. The marketing aspect is the only possible answer.

 

This kind of reminds me of Intel selling their 386sx and 486sx chips. They were the exact same cpu as the 386dx and 486dx but they didn't connect the traces to the math co-processor. It was marketing all the way. They charged a lot more for the dx line of chips even though they weren't any harder or more costly to manufacture.

[+Farb]

This kind of reminds me of Intel selling their 386sx and 486sx chips. They were the exact same cpu as the 386dx and 486dx but they didn't connect the traces to the math co-processor. It was marketing all the way. They charged a lot more for the dx line of chips even though they weren't any harder or more costly to manufacture.

Wow! Talk about memories! I've still got a FUNCTIONING 386dx!! Don't date yourself...

[tossedsalad]

That may be the production cost per unit as far as parts and production line labor. You also have to figure in the cost of R&D, then the marketing cost, advertising, product liability insurance and sales commissions, it adds up quickly. Lets no forget we as consumers do not hear about all the products that the manufactures have produced a small quantity that have never made it to market, this can be  a very expensive part of the R&D process.

Electronic design is the business I am in. The idea that you produce a product that nobody buys is more myth than reality. These things are well thought out before they spend the $1 million or so that it costs to make a new product. Garmin sells about 2.5 million units a year, so I expect it is in the millions of each model over its lifetime, so that is only about a buck per for R&D. Yes, they pay for "marketing", etc., but if those costs are a lot more significant than R&D, the CEO isn't doing a good job.

 

Here are some hard core numbers...

 

Garmin's most recent quarter produced $74.2 million in income from $264.5 million in revenue. That means for every $4 they brought in, more than $1 of it was profit. Or another way, that $400 GPSr gave them over $100 profit after all was said and done. As it turns out, there would have been a higher profit, but about 1.4% of their profit was eaten up by weakening of the dollar.

[tossedsalad]

The reason why you only get 64MB or whatever in a GPSr vs more in a PDA is that this is static (flash) memory.  Many PDAs have regular dynamic RAM as their built-in memory, which loses everything if the battery runs flat for more than a certain amount of time.

 

DRAM and Flash are at about the same price point per bit. Both use a 1 transistor cell, so they use the same die area. I have not kept up with either DRAM or Flash, but I know you can buy 4 Gb Flash chips and I am pretty sure 1 Gb is about the largest DRAM chips. So it looks like perhaps DRAM may be more expensive.

 

PDAs use DRAM because it is much faster than Flash.

 

Now, as for why you get 64 rather than 128, marketing certainly comes into it, in two ways: the relative positioning of different models (I find Garmin's range particularly labyrinthine), but also the price point.  Adding $1 to the cost of components typically adds $10 to the final product's list price.  It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

 

The markup greatly depends on the product. I have never seen the 10/1 rule of thumb, but I have seen everthing from 5/1 to 2/1. But that is a short way of getting a gross estimate, not a reliable indicator of any given change.

 

Simple flash memory cards are less susceptible to this 10:1 markup because it's basically just the chip, so there's less other R&D cost to amortise.  But a flash card reader slot in a handheld unit would add the same amount, or more, to the overall cost, as integrating the flash onto the unit's board.

 

That greatly depends on the size of the Flash doesn't it? If you wanted to add 1 GByte, then the $0.50 connector that would add $2 (according to me, $5 according to you) to the selling price is cheap compared to the $50 worth of Flash chips that would add $250 to the price.

 

20 years ago I worked on a project to make a weighing scale for butchers' stores (etc) that could talk to the cache register.  We spent a lot of time getting our code (written in Forth, for small size) to fit into a 16K ROM rather than a 32K ROM, as it saved about $2.50 on chips, which made $25 off the final price.  For a $200 unit this was a big consideration.

 

Wow! It is not often you meet a Forther. Done any good Forth lately? I am starting a project at a new job and will be needing something to test out the hardware. I would like to use Forth as a debug monitor, but I don't want to rock the boat. I have no idea how they expect to test the hardware. But that is another thread...

[+Alan2]

Most of the memory required is for road navigation maps like Garmin's City Select or Metroguide. Since I started using a PPC and Mapopolis for visual and voice promted road navigation, I am not limited to the amount of roads since they are stored in the PPC's SD card which could cover the US if you use a large enough SD or you can swap smaller sized SD's.

 

Since Garmin and Magellan topo maps are considrerably smaller, you can download hugh geographic areas into a hand held GPS for use in the woods reserving the GPS memory for that purpose only. A cheaper non-auto navigation model is all you need. Save the difference for a PPC.

 

Once you're using a PPC or Palm for road navigation, you can also use it for paperless caching, 24k mtopo mapping, games, office funmctions like appts, telephione lists etc.

Edited October 20, 2005 by Alan2