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Garmin Is On the Lookout for Israeli Collabs

The U.S. tech company, known for its watches, already has some 50 collaborations in Israel

Meir Orbach 15:1628.11.19

Kansas-headquartered technology company Garmin Ltd. wants to expand its collaboration with Israel startups. In a recent interview with Calcalist, the company’s business development manager Benedict Kurz said that Garmin currently collaborates with 50 companies in Israel, but is looking to increase that number significantly.

Garmin is not ruling out the possibility of an acquisition, Kurz said; the company recently acquired a French company with which it collaborated and incorporated its technology into Garmin’s watches.

Garmin's business development manager Benedict Kurz . Photo: PR

Though Garmin manufactures a variety of consumer electronic products, it is best known for its watches and is considered a leading sports watch manufacturer. Founded in 1989, the company has a market capitalization of $18.5 billion on Nasdaq and reported revenues of $3.3 billion and a net profit of $694 million for 2018. For the third quarter of 2019, the company reported $934 million in sales and a net profit of $227 million.

Recently, the sports watch market felt the shockwaves of Google’s acquisition of Fitbit. The acquisition was mainly the result of Google’s desire to get its hands on the data generated by Fitbit’s millions of users, but Garmin, as a hardware company, is not interested in data, Kurz said. The company has no intention of using or sharing information generated by users, he added, though users may choose to do so as part of a collaboration with other apps.

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Kurz spoke to Calcalist while on a visit to Israel. One of the goals of the trip, he said, was to better understand what makes Garmin’s collaboration with local companies so successful. According to Kurz, Garmin is hoping to recreate the successful work process in Europe. Among the company’s existing collaborations are Zone7, which uses artificial intelligence to predict sports injuries; Datos Health Ltd., whose technology enables hospitals to monitor, detect, analyze, and predict changes in patient condition; and SleepRate Inc., which offers an app for monitoring sleep.

Garmin aims to increase the number of its users, and one of the best ways to do it is to offer them solutions for a wide range of problems, Kurz said. On the startups’ side, Garmin can offer large amounts of data, and access to companies and markets they wouldn’t reach in other ways, he said.