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Garmin in talks to buy Navigon?

It's hard out there for a company making endangered gadgets. According to  Reuters , flailing satnav maker Navigon could be acquired by none other than Garmin, which has struggled itself to maintain strong handheld navigator sales in the face of stiff competition from smartphones. The deal could be worth somewhere in the "mid-double-digit million" Euro range -- a none-too-helpful estimate, but enough for us to understand that the personal navigator market is in such a state that Garmin could scoop up its rival for a pretty modest sum. Garmin, for its part, has been doing well, considering -- it's the top navigator brand in the US (a market Navigon has long since exited), and its profit nearly tripled in the most recent quarter. That's largely thanks to those bestselling navigators, but also because the company's been wise enough to reinvent itself as a purveyor of running watches and expand its boating and aviation businesses. In any case, if the Navigon b...

Reuters: a failed takeover of T-Mobile would cost AT&T as much as $6 billion

AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile was  a big deal  as soon as it was announced, but now  Reuters has unearthed some more context to lend it even more cruciality. We already knew that in the event of AT&T&T-Mobile failing to garner regulatory approval, AT&T would owe Deutsche Telekom, the current owner of T-Mo USA, $3 billion in cash, some spare AWS spectrum, and a roaming agreement "on terms favorable to both parties."  Reuters'  sleuths say that the spectrum in question is worth $2 billion and the roaming deal a further $1 billion, bringing the total breakup payout to a hair-raising $6 billion. Given the wording of the two companies' deal, we don't expect the roaming part of that settlement would be free for T-Mobile (so $6b looks to be a bit of an over-estimation), but the fact remains that AT&T is staking a whole lot of moolah on this takeover going through. Whether it does or not, Deutsche Telekom's René Obermann (above l...