My question is directly related to a feature developed by Garmin, available on G1000 for 10 years now: Synthetic Vision.
Pricetag has been around 10k€ since release of the option and consists in an SD card (software unlock).
In the meantime, Synthetic Vision has become widely available, on certified (Aspen and Avidyne) and portable (plenty including Garmin) devices, for much much less. I guess the code is pretty the same, and whatever, the data is just the same.
So the question is, why, like every tech thing getting old over the years and loosing value as consequence, those features remain so costly ??
G1000 has been replaced by newer flightdecks, and will be soon a thing of the past.
And considering the number of systems in circulation, wouldn’t be a better strategy to lower the price of those option(s) (the actual cost is 0 for them) and try to sell more ?
Just sharing some afternoon thoughts…
That seems easy to answer: because a sufficient number of people are (supposed to be) inclined to pay those amounts. Probably because to them it is only a small part of their total flying budget.
I think our aviation hobby° may well be among those with the greatest ratio between maximal/minumum budget, so that an amount that some find insane will be quite bearable to some others.
But I think the marketeers at Garmin are very able, questioning/discussing their decisions/policies is not for the likes of me…
° with apologies to the professional pilots present.
Garmin own most of the universe, and the bits they don’t own (e.g. Avidyne) they could buy anytime, and shut them down.
Also SV is a “high end IFR” product which is great for product differentiation, hence the high cost.
Also if you have a plane with a G1000, you can hardly change the avionics. It would cost more than the plane is worth, in most cases. So there is no value to Garmin in being nice.
Finally there may be stuff like Garmin paying somebody to generate the data and they need to recover that. I don’t know the process; I assumed all SV data comes from the US SRTM programme and the various box makers integrate it, but there is clearly more to it because one needs to e.g. blend in airports otherwise they would look strange, against the SRTM elevation errors of say 100ft.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
That seems easy to answer: because a sufficient number of people are (supposed to be) inclined to pay those amounts. Probably because to them it is only a small part of their total flying budget.
This seems to be standard in aviation. I am still very new to all this, but from a purely technical point of view, there isn’t much more technology in a modern SEP than in a modern middle-class car. The engines used are fundamentally very similar technology. Modern cars also tend to have displays and GPS and such, they just need less instruments than an aircraft because they are moving in a 2D space all the time.
Nevertheless, what costs 1000€ in a car seems to cost 10k € in an aircraft, while still being fundamentally the same piece of technology. Very annoying, this. Guess it has to do with economies of scale as well as private flying being seen as a luxury that only the rich can afford anyways.
Peter wrote:
Garmin own most of the universe, and the bits they don’t own (e.g. Avidyne) they could buy anytime, and shut them down.
Maybe. But before Garmin it was Honeywell and King alone (and some airliners-only stuff like Sextant) and the price was three or four or five times what it is now. Therefore I forgive Garmin for charging extra money for extra service 
NB: I wish we had Garmin and not Honeywell databases in our aircraft and the boss would pay me the difference in the annual cost to maintain the (identical!) database current…
As an aparté, those unlock cards sold by Garmin, are linked to the serial number of the aircraft when they are first used.
So that they are then definitely blocked / bound to the aircraft, and cannot be used on another aircraft.
[This of course pure intellectual thinking, but I wonder how strong the limitation is, and how hard it would be to avoid for an ingenious IT encoder ]
Most schemes can be cracked, and a number of GA related ones have been cracked, but very few panel mount related ones have been cracked because it is difficult to get a big enough population / data set to work on. There was one crack involving the old GNS boxes but that’s about it. The KLN94 database was never cracked AFAIK despite there being many thousands installed. The KMD550 database was cracked but not really; it simply involved buying a €400 flash card copier from a German company.
And if somebody does crack something, they won’t post it on a forum, and they can’t easily pass on the knowledge because other users of same kit are too thinly dispersed.
I don’t like it but they can charge what they like. It isn’t a true competitive market as you can’t replace G1000. Why would they lower the cost when they know eventually for every G1000 box someone might pay it? And the cost varies by the cost of the airframe.
Why would they lower the cost when they know eventually for every G1000 box someone might pay it?
To improve market penetration !
The G1000 is a special case. In most instances, the aircraft manufacturer owns the STC, not Garmin. The G1000 is integral to the aircraft type and except for the King Air retrofit, there is no after market. You buy the aircraft with the system, not the system. Features are sold thru the aircraft manufacturer.
