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Old 12-24-2009, 10:22 AM
Damn Yankee Damn Yankee is offline
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This is a article from MSN Money about company's that may not be around in 2020.

6. Magellan
Once a novelty, GPS -- the technology that plots your location via satellite -- is now ubiquitous. Besides dashboard GPS devices in cars, consumers can now get GPS access in smart phones and even cameras.

This is all part of a natural progression in technology in which software comes along to do the same thing you previously needed stand-alone devices for, Stevens says.

And it means that soon enough, consumers won't see any reason to buy GPS devices like those sold by Magellan, a private company but a well-known name, because software on their phone does the same thing.

To get a sense of the extent to which GPS is now a commodity, just consider the intense price competition in the space. On Black Friday, vendors such as Magellan were offering generic GPS devices as low as $69 -- $21 below the cost of materials in the devices -- just to try to keep shelf space, Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg says.

You know a business appears doomed when companies have to sell below costs, even temporarily, just to stay in the game.

Troubled companies, Kodak, Blockbuster, Sears, Palm - MSN Money
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