Garmin announced the nuvifone G60 about 2 years back just after Apple released their first iPhone in June 2007. Garmin initially planned to ship the touchscreen smartphone with full on GPS capabilities in early 2008, but in January 2008 Garmin announced that the handset would come to the market in second half of 2008 rather than in first quarter of 2008.

However, the nuvifone was further delayed and Garmin formed a partnership with Asus to help develop the smartphone in Q3 2008. Both Garmin and Asus then announced plans to ship the nuvifone G60 in first half of 2009.

SlashGear is reporting today that Garmin has again delayed the releases of nuvifone G60. The company blamed complexities in development of smartphone for the delay. Garmin’s President and COO, Cliff Pemble said “Smartphones are complicated and bringing one to the market that’s built totally from ground up on a custom Linux platform is not an easy task.” Garmin insisted that carriers are still very interested in the nuvifone G60 smartphone, even though it has been delayed by almost two years now.

With improvement in GPS software for other smartphones, Garmin’s nuvifone G60 is becoming more and more irrelevant. And by the time Garmin ships the nuvifone G60, GPS navigation would be just another feature on most of the smartphones, rather than being the feature on a smartphone.