Garmin Releases GPS APIs on New Developer Site

In a rather unexpected turn of events, Garmin has launched a new developer site, containing a plethora of information intended to help mobile software developers "make their website, applications, and data content compatible with Garmin navigation systems." This announcement coincides with this week's 2007 O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference in San Jose.

Garmin are currently offering six basic toolkits/services on their developer site: Communicator Plugin, MotionBased Web Services, Content Toolkit, PeerPoint Messaging System, Location-based services (LBS) Toolkit, and Fleet Management Interface.

This announcement could theoretically spur tighter integration between current Palm OS devices and Garmin Bluetooth GPS receivers. In theory, Garmin's final Palm OS-based iQue, the iQue 3000, is still listed as a current model, so perhaps this move will kickstart some developer interest in the only GPS-enabled Palm OS device still widely available on the market. The iQue 300 was announced amidst little fanfare in January 2006 but did not appear for sale until late spring of 2006 due to unspecified delays. It has survived two prior purgings (here and here) of the rest of the iQue line.