RE; GRMN

Post-earnings, you see, Garmin held its customary conference call with the analysts. It was here that we learned that the strong ASPs enjoyed in the third quarter won't survive long into the fourth quarter:

Unit shipments of personal navigation devices will increase sequentially heading into the Q4 Christmas season.
But "pricing and margin [will remain] in line with 2008 levels" -- erasing at least some of the gains in profitability enjoyed in Q3.
Revenues should be flat year over year in fitness, and down in aviation. (With small airplane sales suffering across the board, from Embraer (NYSE: ERJ) to General Dynamics to Textron (NYSE: TXT), we didn't really need management to tell us that add-on equipment for planes might suffer.)
All of which adds up to the following: Q3 was great, but it won't repeat next quarter.

Foolish final thought
As if Garmin bulls didn't have enough to worry about with the margin troubles, Chief Operating Officer Cliff Pemble confirmed that Garmin's answer to smartphones from Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM), and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) -- the nuvifone -- is enjoying "relatively slow" sales. So slow, in fact, that Garmin's cutting the device's price to $199 when sold through AT&T (NYSE: T).

Such a deep cut, so soon after the phone was introduced, confirms my thinking back in September: Pricing nuvifone so far above the competing iPhone (which can cost as little as $99 with the same AT&T two-year contract) was foolish-without-the-capital-F.

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