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  • Four out of Five Cell Phones to Integrate GPS by End of 2011

    With cell phones increasingly becoming the nexus of the burgeoning markets for navigation and Location Based Services (LBS), the use of GPS technology in such platforms is set to explode during the coming years, according to iSuppli.

    In the fourth quarter of 2011, 79.9 percent of cell phones shipped—amounting to 318.3 million units—will incorporate GPS functionality, up from 56.1 percent in the first quarter of 2009—or 187.8 million units—iSuppli predicts.

    The research group says the adoption of GPS in mobile handsets is being driven by smart phones.

    “The smart phone is the key product driving the technology industry today—and social networking services and applications spurred by GPS-related features are critical elements in the smart phone market today,” said Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst for iSuppli.

    “This is illustrated by Google’s decision to make turn-by-turn navigation, LBS and mobile ads the central features in its bid to take on Apple in the smart phone market, and make up the central pillars of its strategy to increasingly monetize mobile search.”

    Rebello said that smartphones are taking over from Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs) as the major platform for navigation. By 2014, usage of navigation-enabled smart phones will exceed that of PNDs.

    Furthermore – he continued – the smart phone is likely to generate many innovative LBS apps in the next five years. Apple’s iPhone already has more than 6,000 LBS apps available.

    Meanwhile, both Apple and Google are focusing on mobile advertising as a key source of revenue used in association with LBS.

    Apple’s new iAd platform, part of the company’s updated iPhone OS 4 operating system, enables the embedding of advertisements into applications, allowing iPhone users to interact with the ad without leaving the app. Similarly, Google in May acquired leading mobile ad provider AdMob.

    “Nonetheless, Apple recently upped the ante in the smart phone GPS segment with the addition of a gyroscope to its latest iPhone model. Used in combination with GPS, an accelerometer, a compass and the gyroscope can be used for in indoor navigation with floor accuracy,” as the analysts claim.

    iSuppli also sees an increased penetration of embedded GPS in a range of consumer and compute electronic devices by 2014. For example, iSuppli estimates that 18 percent of laptops and 42 percent of portable handheld video game players will have embedded GPS in 2014.

    According to the research group, altogether, the boom in mobile handset navigation will benefit suppliers of GPS semiconductors such as Texas Instruments, Broadcom Corp., Infineon Technologies and CSR.

    “GPS is not the only embedded connectivity technology that will be increasingly embedded in consumer and compute electronics devices. With the ratification of the Bluetooth 4.0 standard supporting the Bluetooth Low Energy profile, iSuppli expects increased penetration of Bluetooth in wireless mice, keypads and other interface devices for the mobile and desktop market—an area that has been dominated by proprietary technologies,” said Rebello.

    Related articles
    Mobile Location-based Service Revenues in Europe to Reach €420 Million by 2015
    MWC 2010: Interview with Toni Klinc from Mireo
    What Does Nokia’s Launch of Free Navigation Mean to the Market?

  • iSuppli: Does Google’s PND App Signal the Swan Song of Dedicated Devices?

    For European Portable Navigation Device (PND) manufacturer TomTom and U.S.-based Garmin, Oct. 29, 2009 will indeed be remembered as the day everything changed.

    “Google’s announcement that it plans to launch turn-by-turn navigation on the Android platform would be enough of a headache in itself, but giving it away for free? Sound the alarm!,” says Richard Robinson, iSuppli analyst.

    There has to be some sympathy for PND and navigation device vendors that have spent the last year redefining their businesses in the light of the economic shock that crunched the world economy beginning in the fourth quarter of 2008.

    “But clearly, the announcement from Google is a bit like arriving at work one day to find one of the biggest brands in the world has moved in next door, and is offering a version of your product to consumers—for free,” Robinson says.

    According to him, what is concerning is that TomTom and other EU-based navigation providers are heavily dependant on the success of their hardware and software products, while for Google, this product will represent yet another very small cog in a much more complex machine that is being built to increase the footfall to their paid advertising.

    “Ironically – he continues – the hang over that awaits existing navigation providers is a slice of history repeating itself. Back in 2004, when TomTom released the first PND into the European market, heads were bowed; particularly in the boardrooms of the Japanese electronics manufacturers that dominated the in-dash navigation market.”

    He claims Japanese Tier-1 companies such as Alpine, Panasonic and Pioneer, as well as Harman Becker in Europe, were simply not able to counter the threat from the much cheaper and more flexible portable device sector that was taking hold in Europe. “While the rest of the world looked on, these new kids on the block cleaned up during the next two to three years, with triple-digit growth the norm for all PND suppliers.”

    “So here we are again, but this time the game has changed for good. Clearly, the take-it-or-leave-it nature of free application downloads will do nothing to boost the image of navigation as a smart product. So it’s no surprise that both TomTom and Garmin’s shares have been badly hit since the announcement on October 28th,” Robinson adds.

    iSuppli analyst thinks both companies during 2009 have indeed staged good recoveries in their fortunes—and share prices—but this is move by Google such a disrupter, that it is difficult to see how these device vendors can add real value in the face of the launch of a free app. “No doubt the initial experience will be less rich compared to a dedicated device, but this will change. And it’s not as though Google will be overloaded with complaints about a free app”.

    According to Robinson, the question now is: Will the PND platform become a footnote in history—a one-hit-wonder?

    “Clearly the PND vendors would like us to think there is more in the locker, but it’s difficult to see the next steps for this dedicated device, particularly in the maturing markets of Europe and the United States,” he concludes.

  • Google Enters Navigation Market

    It is now official and will completely change the mobile and PND navigation market. Google announced Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 devices.

    It comes with 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting, but unlike most navigation systems, the Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of the phone’s internet connection, as Google claims.

    The features possible because Google Navigation is connected to the internet are:
    • recent map and business data: phone automatically gets the most up-to-date maps and business listings from Google Maps — there is no need to buy map upgrades or update the device;
    • search by voice: searching destinations using google voice search (speak your destination instead of typing);
    • traffic view: live traffic data over the internet (a traffic indicator light in the corner of the screen glows green, yellow or red, depending on the current traffic conditions along the route);
    • search along route: searching for a specific business along the route (you can also turn on popular layers, such as gas stations, restaurants or parking);
    • satellite view: the same satellite imagery as Google Maps on the desktop;
    • Street View: shows the turn as you’ll see it, with the route overlaid (Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination).

    There is also car dock mode available for certain devices – placing a phone in a car dock activates a special mode (new user interface with, e.g. much larger iconography) that makes it easy to use the device at arm’s length.

    The first phone to have Google Maps Navigation is Motorola’s Droid. It hits the U.S. market next week (Nov. 6th) for $199 on contract (after a $100 mail-in rebate) and will be available from Verizon with voice plan starting at $39 and a web and email plan for $29 per month.

    Like other Google Maps features, Navigation is free.

    Here is the official Google video

  • Application Stores as a Great Opportunity for Mobile Navigation


    Application stores are presenting a new, significant channel for the promotion and distribution of mobile applications in EMEA. In recent report Canalys analyzes how important will this channel become for navigation applications, and what opportunities does it present.

    “Turn-by-turn navigation is one of the few types of mobile application that consumers have shown a willingness to pay a valuable premium for. In part, this is because these solutions replicate the dedicated, portable navigation device (PND) proposition that consumers are used to associating with a price tag of up to €250 – and even more for some specialist niche products,” says Canalys.

    But, encouraged by existing application stores, there is an expectation that the applications found in app stores are cheap or even free: certainly Apple has seen mostly free applications downloaded from its store.

    Navigation offerings therefore need to be priced competitively to succeed, while preserving sufficient margins for developers.

    Canalys anticipates that as perpetual solution prices inevitably fall, vendors will look to subscription business models, at least for additional premium content, to deliver higher returns from their customers.

    “Vendors must also watch closely how free or very cheap basic navigation applications, such as Nav4All, AndNav2 and Roadee, perform. Though lacking brand recognition and usually based on community-generated maps of questionable and varying quality, such as those from the OpenStreetMap project, consumer expectations of these solutions are low and relatively simple to exceed,” analytics say.

    Canalys claims if these applications can give a user experience good enough for basic use cases, reviews and ratings and viral promotion could see them taking customers away from established vendors.

    App Marketplace

    Application stores, meanwhile, are already establishing themselves as consumers’ first port of call when looking for mobile applications or device personalisation and enhancement options.

    According to the report, technological and optimisation barriers to mass-market uptake of phone-based navigation in EMEA are continually being eroded. Of the 26.1 million smart phones that shipped in EMEA in H1 2009, 22.6 million (86.7%) had application-accessible integrated GPS chipsets, compared with just 36.0% for the same period in 2008.

    In H1 2009, 42.3% of GPS-integrated smart phones that shipped in EMEA used a touch-screen as the primary input method. Meanwhile, Nokia continues to bundle free periods of turn-by-turn navigation with the vast majority of its S60 smart phones and to offer navigation-focused devices or SKUs, such as the 6710 Navigator and the 5800 Navigation edition, respectively.

    Other handset vendors, such as HTC and Samsung, as well as some operators, have also now finally started to not just pre-install, but actively promote navigation solutions, usually powered by third-party software.

    “All this has helped create a market environment, certainly in the developed markets of Europe, where consumers are now well aware that they can use mobile phones for satellite navigation,” says Canalys.

    Combined with growth in mobile application marketplaces and the accompanying consumer interest in browsing and discovering applications, the EMEA market for phonebased navigation offers exciting growth potential.

    Canalys forecasts that the user base for phone-based navigation in EMEA will grow by 40% year-on-year to 6.3 million in 2009, and by 54% to 9.7 million in 2010.

    How to exploit the new opportunity?

    With June’s iPhone OS 3.0 launch, Apple allowed turn-by-turn navigation applications to be developed for the iPhone and sold via the App Store. Navigon quickly got its MobileNavigator application into the store, beating TomTom, which had already shown its application at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, analyzes Canalys.

    Navigon evidently saw a first-mover advantage and quickly became a leading application on the German and UK stores, where its brand is established, priced at €99.99 for European map coverage, or €50 to €70 for a single country or group of countries.

    The Navigon application, and the similarly priced TomTom solution that followed just over a month later, were positioned as premium applications at price points comparable to entry-level PNDs.

    “ALK, however, took a different approach, quickly placing its perpetually licensed CoPilot Live applications in the store at the much more competitive, affordable prices of €33.99 for specific groups of European countries (eg, the German-speaking DACH countries or Benelux), or €79.99 for Europe-wide coverage.”

    The research says ALK, with a considerably less well-known brand than TomTom, has managed to become a strong contender among turn-by-turn apps on the App Store through being competitive, and now has the highest grossing paid-for application in the UK.

    TomTom’s approach, meanwhile, has been less hurried, for better or worse, and has relied on its brand strength to deliver results and elevate it above a need to enter into a price war. It is also focused on delivering a PNDlike experience as far as possible.

  • Mobile Navigation Users Increased to 28 Million

    According to a new research report by Berg Insight, the number of mobile subscribers downloading navigation routes and turn-by-turn navigation instructions using their mobile handsets increased twofold from H1-2008 to H1-2009 and reached 28 million.

    Until 2015, the subscriber base is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.7 percent to reach 160 million users worldwide.

    The growing adoption will primarily be driven by the broader availability of GPS-enabled handsets and bundling of navigation applications with mobile devices and service plans.

    The report says in countries such as the USA and Japan where mass market GPS handsets are already available, adoption of mobile navigation services have already surpassed 3 and 4 percent of the total mobile subscriber base respectively.

    More recently, increasing volumes of GPS handsets have also started to pave the way for adoption of mobile navigation services in Europe where Personal Navigation Devices have been the prevailing navigation solution for some years.

    In other regions of the world, better availability of low-cost GPS handsets and improving map coverage will enable rapid uptake of navigation services in the coming years.

    “Mobile operators and handset vendors are now starting to experience the business opportunity of a growing installed base of GPS handsets and customers trying navigation services”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight.

    He adds that since relatively few subscribers need turn-by-turn navigation services on a daily basis, the mobile industry should integrate navigation services with other location-based services to improve the total user experience and ensure that customers continue to subscribe.

  • Core Logic to Deliver HD Graphics for Next-Generation Portable Media

    ARM announced that Core Logic, a Korea-based fabless semiconductor manufacturer, has licensed the ARM Mali-400 MP multicore graphics processing unit (GPU) to enable enhanced, high-definition entertainment and browsing experiences on smartphones, fully-featured multimedia phones, portable media players and personal navigation devices without compromising battery life.

    Four-core Mali-400 MP supports complex 2D and 3D multimedia applications at up to 1080p resolution and offers pixel processing rates from 300 million to more than 1G pixels per second. This enables manufacturers of mobile phones, PMPs and PNDs to deliver console-quality gaming, high-quality navigation, spectacular user interfaces and web-browsing to their end users, while benefiting from the lowest memory bandwidth usage of any embedded GPU, leading to very low power consumption.

    The new Mali-400 also supports Khronos OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG standards, further enhancing user experiences on a wide range of digital devices.

    Kwang Pyuk Suh, CEO of Core Logic, said that the company is seeing massive demand for ever higher specification graphics on all multimedia mobile devices, PMPs and PNDs.

    “Device manufacturers are continually looking for technologies that enable them to develop the next high-end, must-have gadget to set them apart from the competition. Additionally, users are becoming increasingly discerning about getting the best out of their chosen applications at home and on the go,” he added.

    Core Logic, whose customers include several major Korean manufacturers, will also become part of the ARM Mali Graphics Ecosystem that brings together a community of developers, technology partners, software vendors and content companies to collaborate and reduce the cost of graphics ownership.

    According to Lance Howarth, general manager of ARM Media Processing Division, the new GPU will enable Core Logic to develop the highest quality multimedia system-on-a-chip technology “that will lie at the heart of next generation digital entertainment and communication devices”.

    “Mali-400 MP and other Mali GPUs are fully compatible with the ARM CPUs that power billions of digital devices around the world. This, combined with the complete Mali graphics stack and the ARM Mali Ecosystem, brings lowered development costs and reduced time to market,” said Howarth.

  • Handset Vendors Eye Russian Smartphone-based Navigation Market


    More than a third of Russian consumers are interested in a smartphone-based navigation device – while nearly 63 per cent are willing to pay more than euro 4 per month for a vehicle tracking service based on a GPS-enabled smartphone.

    These are among the findings of research by Frost & Sullivan which also showed that global positioning system (GPS)-enabled smartphone technology is gaining ground over traditional portable navigation devices (PND) in the Russian navigation and telematics market.

    So much so that in 2009, the smartphone-based navigation market has already exceeded 350,000 units sold in Russia, while the PND market has failed to register even half that amount.

    The analysts conclude that the results indicate that firms must define a clear strategy – positioning products, services and business models around the ever-converging GPS-enabled mobile handsets market in order to expand telematics and navigation into the Russian market.

    The report says that Russian consumers’ desirability and willingness to pay for connected navigation, location-based services and features, finds that the Russian navigation market saw unit sales of 0.45 million in 2008, and will likely reach 2.0 million in 2012.

    This shift is attributable to exponential growth in the GPS-enabled, smartphone-based navigation market and to steady growth in the PND market.

    Praveen Chandrasekar, Frost & Sullivan programme manager, said: "Handset vendors like HTC, Nokia, and Apple are propelling the navigation market in a new direction by pushing more GPS-enabled smartphones into the Russian market.

    "In 2008 the balance shifted more towards the handsets-enabled navigation market rather than PNDs."

    Chandrasekar said this trend clearly shows that this market needs to be addressed with a smartphone-based portfolio in order to succeed.

    Eight out of ten current owners of navigation systems in Russia want to purchase another navigation system within six months.

    Of these, 49 per cent still prefer a PND, but a growing 30 per cent favour a smartphone-based navigation system.

    Russian consumers are willing to pay upwards of euro 100 for a smartphone-based navigation solution.

    In light of the current recession, this solution could clearly prove to be the low-cost killer alternative.

    The economic crisis has put a damper in consumer spending habits in Russia. Although Russian consumers indicate that they are willing to pay upwards of euro 300 for a navigation device, they might not necessarily be ready to do so in this economic climate.

    Chandrasekar said the recession has come at the "wrong time".

    "The navigation market, driven by GPS- enabled smartphones and PND, was on an upswing.

    "However, consumers are increasingly cautious and this might slowdown market development."

  • Smartphones Will Take Over GPS Market


    Cell phones will replace the personal navigation device (PND) as the primary GPS device by 2011, according to the research firm iSuppli.

    The firm predicts that by then, cell phones will account for 36 per cent of the GPS market, compared with 30 per cent for PNDs.

    PNDs today account for half of global navigational units sold.

    The report also forecasts price drops among PNDs that will lead to smaller manufacturers selling out to larger hardware companies over the next couple of years.

    The research comes as LG predicts smartphones will replace digital cameras.

  • Market for mobile touch screen worth US$5bn in 2009


    Apple’s iPhone has done much to thrust touch screens firmly into the public’s consciousness – a place they seem certain to increasingly inhabit.

    A report from ABI Research forecasts that revenue from the global touch screen market for smartphones and other handheld devices such as MIDs, UMPCs, and PNDs will reach USD $5 billion in 2009.

    Shipments of touch screen-based mobile devices increased 91 per cent in 2007 compared to the previous year.

    Yet according to Kevin Burden, research director at ABI, said nearly all mobile handset manufacturers were getting into touch screens to a greater or lesser extent.

    But he added that there were strong regional differences in the uptake of touch screens.

    The Asia/Pacific market, where more than 80 per cent of the world’s touch screen-based mobile phone production was consumed over the past year, has been a major driver in the rising demand.

    “The acceptance of touch screens to date has varied by geographic region, which has been a significant factor in determining the success of individual handset vendors,” he said.

    Samsung and Motorola have been the most successful, commanding 33 per cent and 30 per cent shares of the touch screen mobile phone market respectively.

    “Samsung and Motorola lead the market for touch screen phones primarily because of their scale and significant presence in the Asian markets,” said Burden.

    “Because it’s difficult to represent even a fraction of the common Asian characters on a QWERTY-style keyboard, touch screen devices on which characters can be written with a stylus are immensely popular.”

    At 24 per cent, Sony Ericsson has the third-largest market share, while all the other handset vendors – including Apple – are essentially niche players.

    The ABI report said that a number of factors are driving further adoption of touch screen-based mobile devices.

    *Consumers are looking for more intuitive user interfaces and personalization options as device functionality increases.

    *Prices for touch components and panels continue to decrease and are falling on an average of nearly 10 per cent per annum.