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Lately, there's been some skepticism on whether Garmin (GRMN) is ever again going to enjoy monster growth. The world's number one GPS manufacturer has seen its stock price tumble 60% in the last four months, and is currently still in freefall.

So what gives? Has the Street given up on one of its former high flyers? They've certainly got an excuse. Not only did Garmin's average unit selling price drop precipitously last quarter, but their CFO recently predicted it will drop another 20% in 2008.

Yet there's another side to the story which we've learned through surveying our 15,000-member expert research network. And what we've uncovered is that Garmin (GRMN) has now achieved near total domination of the U.S. marketplace.

During February we conducted two ChangeWave surveys on GPS - one on consumer GPS trends (n = 3,773) and the other on corporate purchasing trends (n = 2,013). Here's what we found:

Consumer GPS Trends

Our February 18-25 survey of consumers who own a GPS navigation device, showed Garmin with a 56% market share - an increase of 4 percentage points since the previous survey in January 2008. Garmin's percentage towers over its closest rival Magellan, which captured only 12%.

Going forward, Garmin (54%; up 5-pts) remains first on the map in terms of planned consumer purchases of GPS navigation devices for the next 90 days. TomTom is second with 8% (down 1-pt), and Magellan has fallen to third with just 4% (down 2-pts).

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Corporate GPS Trends

Turning to our February 11-15 corporate survey, Garmin continues its reign as the dominant leader with a hefty 58% share of the corporate GPS market. That's a full 11-pts higher than the previous corporate buying survey in November 2007.

Magellan has also gained some corporate ground since the previous survey (12%; up 4-pts), even as TomTom's numbers have fallen to just 9%, down 3-pts since November.

Going forward it's more of the same for Garmin, as it dominates planned corporate GPS purchases for the 2nd Quarter with a 56% market share. That's a huge 10-pt jump since November.

Best Quarter in History? Now Wait a Minute.

Garmin's February 20th quarterly earnings call has confirmed our ChangeWave survey findings, with the company stating flat out that it was the "best quarter in our history."

Garmin reported earnings per share of $1.39, on sales of more than $1.2 billion - a 99% increase from a year earlier, with profits up an impressive 70%. Analysts had projected earnings of just $1.12 per share. To top it off, the company stated that its outlook for the rest of 2008 remained strong.

So with such good news, you might wonder why Garmin's share price took a big 20% hit in the weeks immediately following their quarterly earnings announcement.

According to Wall Street analysts, the combination of significantly lower profit margins for Garmin (down more than 15%) and an ongoing retrenchment in U.S. consumer spending has undermined Garmin's stock price going forward.

Indeed, the continued slowdown in U.S. consumer spending growth was the headline of ChangeWave's most recent consumer survey results. Our February survey found an astonishing two-in-five U.S. respondents (39%) saying they'll spend less over the next 90 days than they did a year ago - 5-pts worse than our January 2008 survey.

The decline in spending growth is occurring across all income levels. But most ominously - not only for Garmin but for the entire GPS devices industry - the survey showed consumer electronics spending in the midst of a major slowdown.

To put this in perspective, it's the weakest outlook for electronics spending ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey.

Given such a slowdown, it's understandable why Garmin and so many other high flying electronics stocks have had an extremely rough go of it lately. But despite shrinking profit margins and an extremely tough consumer spending environment, our latest ChangeWave surveys show Garmin is gobbling up share in the high growth GPS market.

The verdict is out on whether Garmin can return to its previously lofty heights - but it's a company investors should be watching closely.

	Paul Carton is the Research Director of the ChangeWave Alliance.
	Jim Woods is ChangeWave's Senior Editor.