Navigational device maker Garmin announced Wednesday that its second-quarter earnings missed Wall Street expectations, the Associated Press reports. The company also projects limited growth for the rest of the year and—notably—said it would delay the Nuvifone's release until sometime in 2009.

Update by Mark Hachman.

Update 7/31:"As we stated in our press release this morning the Mobile network operator launch as a phone will not occur in 2008 as we earlier anticipated," Cliff Pemble, president and chief operating officer of Garmin, said during the conference call, as reported by Seeking Alpha.. "We look forward to US and European carrier announcements in 2009. While we hope to have carrier launches in the fourth quarter implementing curious specific requirements has taken longer than we anticipated. We continue to be very pleased with carrier interest in the device and we remain completely committed to bringing the devices like no other to the mobile community."

Pemble also agreed with an analyst question that Garmin's sales target for the nuviphone was about a million units per year, and, failing that, the company might rethink its commitment to the market.

The Nuvifone, you may recall, is a smartphone squished together with one of the company's popular Nuvi portable GPS units. Essentially, Garmin is introducing the Nuvifone as a hedge against the wireless market. Cell phone carriers are putting more and more GPS chipsets, and even spoken turn-by-turn directions, into their cell phones, a development that threatens Garmin's core business.