Garmin is a very resilient company.
Over the past 15 years, two Big Tech players took direct hits on its main revenue streams.
◽️GPS: When Google released Maps for Android in 2008, Garmin's car GPS devices made $2B a year (~70% of total sales). It's now only $1B year.
◽️Smartwatches: From 2008 to 2014, Garmin’s smart fitness watches (GPS, heart tracking, waterproof) grew from $0 to $1B. Then, Apple released the Apple Watch.
In response to the Apple threat, Garmin started selling high-end models and has carved out a niche in the premium fitness smartwatch market ($2-$3,000 price points vs. $799 for Apple Watch Ultra).
Today, smart fitness watches make up 60% of Garmin's ~$5B sales (GPS — evenly divided between car, aviation and marine segments — is 40% of revenue vs. 100% in 2008).
After surviving these haymakers, Garmin is up ~3x from 2008 and worth $20B.

Great breakdown (and chart) from The Economist: economist.com
Garmin really did carve out a solid niche at $20B market cap (vs. Apple at $2.7T and $1.7T at Google).

Garmin also benefits from Big Tech obviously.
A lot of its watches use Gorilla Glass, commercialized by Apple and Corning for the first iPhone (higher-end Garmin and Apple Watch use sapphire-crystal glass).
Anyways, I wrote this on Gorilla Glass:
readtrung.com

Garmin thoughts from replies:
— Battery Life: The watches (particularly solar-powered ones) last very long.
— Great community: Garmin used by most serious fitness folk (you see someone on street with it, you know)
— Marine GPS: Sounds like it corned GPS for fishing (and also very good sailing equipment)
— Defense contracts: Long-term contracts with military for GPS
— Biking gear: Head unit, power pedals, hr monitor, speed monitor, cadence monitor, rear radar, etc (h/t @girdley)

Just asked Claude — via my Bearly.AI research app — how Garmin GPS survived Google Maps.
Four reasonable reasons here:

Also, need to clarify that “Fitness and Outdoor” revenue — 60% of total $5B sales — isn’t just smartwatches.
It’s a big part of it but also includes tracking and equipment for these key activities.

Replies are raving about the Garmin watch’s “Solar Charging” ability (to top off 2ish weeks battery life).
Garmin video on it below and tech is very interesting (adapted from Gorilla Glass).
Search YT, “does Garmin solar charging work?” for vids testing it and showing results.