Garmin and Asus announced today that they are teaming up to create a line of co-branded location-based services centric phones, called Garmin-Asus nüvifone™ series. The original nüvifone™ that Garmin announced way back in January 2008 will be rebranded as nüvifone™ G60, is still expected to hit first half of 2009. Garmin and Asus said that they expect to release multiple phones this year.

garnmin-nuvifone

This deal makes a lot of sense to both companies. Garmin has no experience building phones, and it can definitely use Asus’s expertise in this space. In case you didn’t know Asus has made LOTS of phones, they are just not commonly sold in North America. Asus also needs something to differentiate its phones in this competitive space, and Garmin can provide its top-notch navigation experience as the differentiator. It’s a great match.

LaptopMag has reviewed a prototype of the nuvifone last year. You can click on the video to see what the device is like. But of course, it was only a prototype and anything can change.

Another interesting thing to point out is that both Garmin and Asus are members of the Open Handset Alliance, the group of companies working on Android. The first nuvifone is expected to have its own proprietary OS because Garmin did not join OHA until it was very deep into development, but we would be surprised if Garmin-Asus continues to maintain its proprietary OS after that and not fully adopt Android.

Mobile Congress is only 12 days away and it’s going to be very exciting this year.

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