Garmin and ASUS join forces on nuvifone navigation phones - new model launching at MWC

Garmin-ASUS nuvifone G60

Garmin-ASUS nuvifone G60

Garmin-ASUS nuvifone G60

Today at a press event in Taiwan, ASUS and Garmin announced the formation of a strategic alliance that will see the two companies building co-branded location-centric mobile phones together. ASUS, known for its personal computer components as well as its Windows Mobile based smartphones, and Garmin, the leader in personal GPS navigation devices, started working together over a year ago in an ODM relationship when the original Garmin nuvifone development started. As a result of the new branding, Garmin-ASUS today announced that the original nuvifone model has been renamed to the Garmin-ASUS nuvifone G60.

Garmin and ASUS are both members of the Open Handset Alliance^(INFO), which is the group founded by Google that backs the Android smartphone operating system. Garmin-ASUS announced that it would unveil a new Garmin-ASUS nuvifone device at this month's Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, but did not specify whether or not the device would run on the Android platform. Earlier this year Garmin did, however, confirm that it was working on an Android based device.

The Garmin-ASUS nuvifone G60 is planned to be available for purchase at some point in the first half of this year, tough no specifics on markets or pricing have been announced yet.