Garmin handheld aviation GPS business – the end?

I heard recently that retail pilot shop sales of these have fallen massively – of the order of 98% i.e. a factor of 50.

Looking at the last Transair catalogue, they have just 2 pages covering these, out of 100 pages.

Clearly this is due to people flying with tablets and phones.

But what is going to happen with Garmin making them? If this drop is anywhere near real, they cannot be worth making.

I wonder if there are other market sectors, not obviously apparent to us in Europe, where these continue to sell?

Some years ago I was talking to a pilot who wanted to fly around Africa and the (today ancient and back then quite old) Skyforce Skymap 4C was the best solution he found for that airspace.

Also the handheld units are very obviously much more robust and don’t suffer from the crashes and heat related shutdowns which you get with modern consumer IT tablets.