Last September, it was still looking good: Sony announced two new PND’s and seemed determined to become a big player in satnav-land. These devices, the Nav-U80 and the Nav-81T, both featuring a 4.3 inch touch screen and support for handsfree phoning via Bluetooth, were supposed to become available by mid-November last year and give Sony’s market share a boost.Delay
Less than two weeks after the initial announcement, it was clear that the planned timescale for the introduction had been too optimistic. Sony let us know that both devices would be delayed until ‘sometime’ in 2007, without giving any details as to what had caused this. Now it’s become apparent that the later announcement can also be ignored, because yesterday Sony announced that the Nav-U80 and Nav-81T are no longer part of their future plans.Sony has confirmed the cancellation, and sent us this bulletin:
“Sony have withdrawn the proposed NV-U80B and NV-U81T personal navigational systems. The next generation of Sony PND's are already in development, and we feel that our customers will be happy to wait for the newer units which have a greater number of features”.
Nav-U51 and U71T
Sony, however, still holds a few cards in their hand when it comes to the PND market. We’re referring to the Nav-U51 and Nav-U71T here. These new devices are about as large as their predecessors, the Nav-U50 and Nav-U70, but they are a bit thinner (33 mm), lighter (280 grams) and feature the SiRF Star III chipset.The Nav-U51 (recommended retail price: ¤ 299,-), and Nav-U71T (¤ 449,-) are largely identical. They differ when it comes to TMC (standard on U71T, optional for U51) and the installed maps: the Nav-U51’s 512 MB of memory carries a regional map and the U71T’s 2 GB of memory the complete European map.
