Garmin watches
Garmin International Ltd. was founded in 1989 by Gary Burrell and Min Kao (hence the name GarMin). Garmin is one of the first companies to offer GPS-based products in the auto-moto, mobile communications, outdoor, sports & fitness, marine electronics and avionics industries. The company is headquartered in the state of Kansas, USA. The largest manufacturing facility, Garmin (Asia) Corporation is located in Sijhih, Taiwan.
Gary Burrell, born in 1937, an electrical engineer by training, originally worked at King Radio, a company that manufactured aircraft radios, where he also worked on radio designs for Boening. The company later merged with Alied Corporation.
Min H. Kao was born in 1949 in a small town in Taiwan called Chushang in Nantou County. After studying at National Taiwan University, he studied in the United States at the University of Tennessee. He subsequently worked for NASA and the United States Army.
Kao was hired by Burrell to work for a branch of the former King Radio, then known as Allied's King, which was responsible for developing military navigation using GPS. Burrell left the company in 1989. The GPS system was not yet fully operational and was being modified with the help of the space shuttle Challenger. It became operational in May 1989. Burrell and Kao both agreed that the future of navigation lay in the use of GPS satellites.
Today, Garmin manufactures and develops almost all types of GPS navigation receivers. In addition to hiking navigators and automotive devices, it also offers devices for boats, airplanes, and more recently, sports electronics, which include smart GPS sports watches, GPS cycling computers, and watches and measuring devices for golfers.
In the area of hiking navigators, which are also widely used for the game of Geocaching, Garmin is now dominant. In the field of receivers for cars, it shares the market mainly with competitor TomTom, but also Nokia, Blaupunkt, Mio, Navigon and others.