Entire Garmin-Asus nuvifone series announced

ODM team up becomes fully-fledged co-branded partnership

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4 February 2009 9:10 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Garmin and Asus have announced a "strategic alliance" to team up to design and make co-branded "location-centric mobile phones".

A whole product line from the partnership will be known as the Garmin-Asus nuvifone series.

The companies say they will launch "several" Garmin-Asus nuvifone models in 2009, with the first model to be announced at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona from 16 February.

Garmin says it's already been working with Asus on the nuvifone it announced back in January 2008 with Dr. Min Kao, chairman and CEO of Garmin saying:

"We've been working with ASUS for over one year on the initial nuvifone that was announced in 2008 on the basis of an ODM relationship. Learning from this experience, we concluded that by leveraging and combining our respective industry-leading areas of expertise at a higher level, we will be able not only to significantly expand our product line, but also to shorten our product development time. We believe that through this strategic alliance we are uniquely positioned to deliver the world’s best integrated and most compelling GPS-enabled mobile devices".

That original nuvifone will now be re-branded as the Garmin-Asus nuvifone G60, and is expected to launch in the first half of 2009 with more info due at the Mobile World Congress event that Pocket-lint is attending - so we'll bring you more very soon.