[3] In 2005, the private equity firm General Atlantic bought a minority interest in the company in order to provide capital for expansion; Peter Scheufen maintains majority ownership.

Navigon Inc. announced its first OEM agreement in November 2004 with EasyPocketNAV.com, a distributor for portable GPS navigation.

He replaced Edgar Christen as General Manager and was responsible for Navigon's operations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and South America.

An authority in the navigation sector, Hecht was a 10-year veteran of Navteq, creators of the world's most widely used digital maps, where he served in senior executive roles in technology and business development in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America.

He reported directly to Egon Minar, chief sales officer at NAVIGON AG (Germany).

According to CEO Egon Minar: "Due to the difficult economic environment and the aggressive pricing we have decided to withdraw from the PND business in North America for the time being.

We are however not closing down our Chicago office which will continue to serve our automotive and mobile phone businesses in North America.

As of August 2009, the only consumer products Navigon offered in North America were apps for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7.

The first line of its press release stated: "Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Navigon AG ("Navigon"), a privately held navigation provider headquartered in Würzburg, Germany.

[13] In June 2011, Navigon introduced a point of interest package derived from the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap project.