Open your wallet again and we’ll give you access to chart updates and this time we won’t abandon you – we promise. In this case current customers only get the stick: stay with the product you bought, and that we implicitly committed to support, and you’ll no longer get updated charts or software. The rest of this marketing scheme is not quite as sound.Ĭustomers usually prefer the carrot over the stick.

The logic of introducing current customers to the new s/w with a free update is certainly sound. I love the Navionics apps and actually used the iPhone charts for real world navigating in the Med while day sailing last summer. But I’m also reminded of a zany band I used to follow whose motto is “”Forward in all directions!” So Navionics Anytime, Anywhere is definitely happening, which is great I think. It can already be bought with European chart regions, will purportedly be available for the US in January, and apparently will be free for people who purchase new Navionics chart cards. Got that? And then there’s the new PC app, a clone of the mobile one, with UGC of course. Confusing…a bit…but necessary since we couldn’t migrate over current install base.” They of course also get the coverage of lakes or marine….before they had to buy multiple apps. So those that have the old app can continue to enjoy them at the last and final version of 5.0 with UGC….and at some point we hope that they will consider a new investment in the new one which will eventually have a lot more features that will lure them in. After 90% of install base has updated…we will then remove them again and they will go to the retirement home for a good long rest. The new download-the-freshest-charts iPhone app has UGC, too, but what about all the folks who already own the original version? Well here’s the story on that: “The old bundles (30) will be re-uploaded at version 5.0 with UGC….with a message on top that says this is for install base only to update, not to buy. Which is why there are so many more regions of the old HD app seen in the lower panel, except they’re newish too, just having become 5.0 versions, which includes the BIG addition of UGC… The iPhone versions seen in the top panel are marked NEW! because they are in fact the completely new app that I wrote about in February and that let’s you download and cache whatever charts (and lake maps, in the US) you want from a much larger region than the original Mobile apps. This is going to confuse people! Navionics has refreshed all its mobile apps, but in two different ways, and they’re not done yet.

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