cenSEI T H E
43
Report
worldwide pnds AND NAVIGATION-ENABLED Smart Phones in Use
350
Millions of Units
300 250 200
Meanwhile, a study by Strategy Analytics predicts that in-car navigations will quadruple by 2019, from 9.5 million in 2009 to 56 million by 2019. The biggest gains will likely take place in China, with sales going from 355,000 to 11.8 million in a decade, as reported in July in The Detroit Bureau.
Time-savers. GPS devices can bring about
150 100 50 0 Graph from “Smart Phones to Surpass PNDs in Navigation Market in 2014,” by IHS iSuppli Corp, Sept. 9, 2009
connectivity, navigation applications, better microprocessor support, higher internal flash memory and improved battery life.
significant time savings. A 2009 study revealed that drivers with traffic-enabled navigation spent 18% less time driving on an average trip compared to those without navigation, saving drivers four days per year. Additionally, drivers experienced reductions in distance traveled as well as increased fuel efficiency, which could cut CO2 emissions by 21%. The study was conducted in Germany by socialscience research firm NuStats, and sponsored by Navteq, provider of digital map, traffic and location data for in-vehicle, portable, wireless and enterprise solutions.
The market share of PND manufacturers like Garmin, the leader in portable satellite navigation is quickly eroding, with sales down 9% two years ago according to market research firm NPD, and figures expected to decline even further this year, as reported in a June 12 article in Wired.
With the growing importance of being online all the time, to be able to get information in real time, it’s not hard to see why Google and now Apple are paying so much attention to map apps for mobile platforms. And yet, it should also be noted that while mobile platforms are the coming thing, they’re not the only game in town for location-based services.
“We’ve been competing successfully with free navigation on Android phones, and through third party apps also on the iPhone, for a couple of years now,” Garmin told Wired in a statement. “We think that there is a market for smartphone navigation apps, PNDs and in-dash navigation systems as each of these solutions has their own advantages and use case limitations and ultimately it’s up to the consumer to decide what they prefer.”
It should be noted that map apps on smartphones fulfill a three-dimensional need: a mobile device providing real-time location information. But the need for location information in real time itself is still growing, and while standalone GPS devices could eventually lose out to map apps on smartphones, there might still be a niche for indash location-based services provided by built-in GPS devices.
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