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Sep. 9, 2008

IMS Research says that more GPS-enabled handsets will ship in 2008 than any standalone navigation devices.

IMS added that wirelesss carriers, phone makers and software vendors are all working to make it happen.

Wireless operators can certainly appreciate the potential for new kinds of premium services.

IMS market analyst Patrick Connolly says that, overall, GPS chip prices are falling and software is becoming more open and is now more accessible to a greater number of wireless market participants.

But standalone units continue to feature such nice-to-have things as real-time road traffic updates, speech input and output and, last but not least, 3D mapping.

Standalone devices also don’t have the problems of confusion when incoming calls arrive during a GPS session.

Compared to the mobile phone market, he said "despite the huge success of standalone GPS devices there is still a comparatively smaller installed base of users, leaving plenty of market upside. Both of these markets will continue to grow concurrently in the medium term, but importantly, they are not independent."

"Already, companies such as NiM, Telmap and TeleNav are seeing increasing subscription numbers for their cellular sat-nav services. Clearly this is at the expense of the standalone market,” said Connolly.

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Source: IMS Research.