GPS Manufacturers Face a Rapidly Changing Market... GPS Phones th

Over the last couple of years I have tried to document the impact adding GPS into most smartphones is going to have or having on the major manufacurers of GPS parts, piences and products. Essentially GPS World is preparing the industry for likely consolidation?

GPS World's OEM Insights — January 2009

"In all, about six to eight major retailers accounted for the majority of GPS/PND sales last year...."

2008 started out sunny and warm as I remember. We all said goodbye to 2007 and a holiday buying spree that exceeded all expectation. With a new year of windfall profits behind them, GPS manufacturers, their shareholders, analysts and investors were confident 2008 would be even better. There were two types of disasters in 2008, however: no. 1 (self inflicted) was created by poor management, over valuation, and lack of insight. The second disaster can be attributed to the general economic market collapse of 2008

In the professional .land use products market, mentioned early, companies suffered setbacks as their main business of productivity solutions targeted the slumping construction, mining ,and utility infrastructure segment. Trimble was seen to tumble in the disaster no. 2 scenario. Although times were tougher, the companies key executives tended to spend a lot of time fine tuning their own compensation packages and stock programs while facing some early heat this year about the reasoning behind the stock repurchase plan, which was used to prop up the stock price. But they know the value of being low key and that accounts for a lot these days.

According to a select group industry watchers, times will be tough for the PND. "This PND space is absolutely going in the crapper," said Jeff Evanson, an analyst at Dougherty & Co. Evanson sees several factors leading to a "dramatic slowdown" in PND sales, including a lack of innovation in PND products for holiday season, signs of market saturation, and competition for consumer spending.

Smartphone Statistics by Manufacrtuer and OS

Worldwide Smartphone Sales Growth Slowing

Posted By: Ryan Kairer on Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:26:35 AM

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7223/worldwide-smartphone-sales-growth-slowing/

3.4 Billion Mobile Phones - A marketing incentive?

Trillion with a T, the Newest Giant Industry has Arrived: the Money and Meaning of Mobile



"We have the newest Trillion dollar baby, and it is growing really fast. In this blog posting I only focused on the big picture items, and didn't even touch upon the content and services that are in this space. I'll do that in a separate blog posting soon. But yes, now the numbers to remember for 2009 - there are four billion mobile phone subscribers on the planet. That means 3 billion unique mobile phone owners, who carry around 3.4 billion mobile phone handsets everywhere they go.'

"The industry sells 1.2 billion new mobile phones every year. The phone in your pocket is as powerful as a supercomputer only 20 years ago or the laptop that is 5 years old, and the capabilities and functions grow at breathtaking speed, partly because the replacement cycle globally is down to 15 months. There are 1.9 billion cameraphones in use today.'

For the first time now, the majority of internet access is from a mobile phone, no longer from a personal computer. Also for the first time, MMS multimedia messaging, or known as "picture messaging" has more users than the total users of email.

"Meanwhile, SMS text messaging continues its climb as the biggest data application in the world, used now by 3 billion people.'

"Mobile messaging is worth about 130 billion dollars. Mobile voice is worth about 600 billion dollars. The mobile data and content industries are worth about 70 billion dollars. The total mobile services industry is worth about 800 billion dollars. The handsets business is worth about 150 billion, and the network hardware rounds out the remainder, a bit under 50 billion, to bring our total to one Trillion (1,000 Billion) dollars."



"This year 2008, Nokia became the world's largest supplier of GPS devices. Its only an added feature on premium Nokia phones, and not every user even cares to use the positioning technology. Yet its there on the phone. But when the industry ships 1.2 billion new phones - yes, 3 million new phones ship every single day, Saturdays, Sundays and all holidays included - that gives it an enormous momentum and the ability to devour almost anything it wants. Oh, how about cameras you ask? Yes that too. The first mass market cameraphones were introduced in Japan in 2001, and Nokia has been the world's most common digital camera brand since 2004. Today the phone industry has shipped a cumulative 3 billion cameraphones, and the current installed base is 1.9 billion cameraphones. 57% of all mobile phones in use on the planet are cameraphones already. Oh, the stand-alone camera industry still lumbers along, selling now a little over 100 million stand-alone cameras but did you notice, since cameraphones appeared, two of the four camera giants have quit the camera business altogether. Minolta and Konica, no more in the camera biz. Shame. My first SLR was a Konica, they made great 35 mm film-based cameras - three decades ago.."

Garmin to build a GeoMobile Phone

Garmin enters the mobile phone market....

posted Yesterday, 11:38 PM by Eric M. Zeman
updated Yesterday, 11:49 PM

Updated: Edited link, added info.

Garmin, maker of GPS products, announced a brand new product called the nuvifone. The nuvifone is a cell phone that resembles the iPhone and is loaded with applications and services from Google. It has HSDPA for 3G connectivity and uses a large touch screen for user input. Some of the services on the nuvifone are Google Local Search, Gmail and Maps with access to local traffic reports and Google Panaramio. One feature, called Where Am I?, automatically locates the device and displays coordinates, as well as lists the closest hospitals, police stations and gas stations. It has an MP3 player, shoots video and stills with automatic geotagging. It also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and full GPS. No word on pricing or carrier support in the U.S. It will not be available until the third quarter.

I am going to ad links to this sort ast it devlopes..

From the handheld GPS side.. htttp://gpstracklog.typepad.com/gps_tracklog/