Some corrections:

Mike, you are confusing X-bow and Pinpoint. It was the X-bow 425 that had chronic failures and was dropped by D2 (not Pinpoint). The line you got from X-bow at OSH was the third or fourth (I lost count) in a series where X-bow said the had a fix, the fix was deployed and then the failure reoccurred. Dave Morss cycled through several 425s that were "fixed" only to fail again before giving up on X-bow. Perhaps they really DO finally have it fixed. Good news for the 420 & 425 owners.

 It was Kirk that was the lead on bringing Pinpoint to market.

A little history. Chelton licensed the experimental product line to D2. Chelton continued to manufacture the hardware and improve and support the software (which is compiled from the same code base as the certified code). D2 was an exclusive dealer and handled all sales and customer support.  Apparently those functions will now, once again, be handled by Chelton.

Scott, Chelton (formerly Sierra Flight Systems) wasn't "lured" into the experimental market, they started in the experimental market over 8 years ago.  Their primary market now is retrofit as is evidenced by their ~500 STCs. Retrofit is a much larger market than new aircraft but you need an STC for each installation, a 1M$- 5M$ proposition, so the barriers to entry are quite high. That is why Garmin focuses on the manufacturers where the manufacturers handle the STC leg work.  Selling to retrofit, or experimental, takes many times the support effort per sale. It is one thing to justify comprehensive customer support when you have a relatively simple device (handheld GPS) that you have sold 500K units and quite another to justify initial engineering, STC efforts and comprehensive customer support for a complex system that  you may sell a couple hundred a year. With Garmin making all their money in the consumer markets it makes the retrofit and experimental look even more obscure. Garmin has just started climbing the barriers to the retrofit market while Chelton sits comfortably on the other side. Then there is the liability. At least when you are selling to a manufacturer you have an insulating layer, but when you are selling to the end user....  Hamid is right, the bean counters won't freely tolerate retrograde expansion once the numbers come in.

Of course I could be wrong. Garmin could be making a strategic move on Chelton in response to Chelton winning OEM contracts (Bell and others) with their new 10.4 inch IDU. It will be interesting to watch.

We (Regan Designs) have been designing digital avionics for over 10 years and Chelton has been one of our clients for most of that time.  'nuf said.

Merry Christmas

Brent Regan