Garmin on-board nav debuts in Nigeria

27 May 2009

Garmin has started the distribution of its on-board navigation software in Nigeria, locally called Garmap for Mobile. Garmin's exclusive distributor in Africa. Garmap, has strong ambition for the Nigerian market. Selling for NGN 10,000 ($68) on a 2GB SD card, the package is compatible with a range of Symbian and Windows Mobile phones with built-in GPS.

Already including 9,800km of routable map data with streetmap coverage of the six biggest cities of Lagos, FCT Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, and Ota, the map data coverage continues to expand with 13 additional cities to be added in June and 42 majors Nigerian cities to be completed by year end.

Garmap is also looking at launching its off-board application (based on Appello software) in the country with a wireless operator. Discussions are ongoing but no deal has been reached yet. Garmap has already launched this solution in South Africa with wireless carrier MTN last month (read more here 1467).

Currently being one of the fastest growing mobile markets worldwide, Nigeria's operators added 7 million subscriptions in the last quarter of 2008, up 83% from 3.7 million net additions in the previous year and 49% higher than the previous quarter's figure. The number of subscriptions in Nigeria grew 51% in 2008, to 63 million.