240 Million Smartphone GPS Devices in 2009

By Marin Perez
InformationWeek

A report released Wednesday from ABI Research said handsets with GPS will continue to grow thanks to attractive new smartphones and the spread of location-based services.

The new report, titled "GPS-Enabled Handsets," said GPS-enabled phones are expected to hit 240 million units in 2009, an increase of about 6.4% from 2008. Analysts, cell phone companies, and industry watchers expect the overall mobile phone market to decline 4% to 8%.

"As the quality of positioning technology in handsets improves and the cost of including it declines, GPS location technology will approach the status of a standard device feature," said senior analyst George Perros in a statement. "We are approaching the point where location awareness will be synonymous with smart devices, a point where personal navigation, social spatial knowledge, and location-specific contextual information will be assumed handset capabilities."

High-profile handsets like Apple's iPhone 3G, Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s T-Mobile G1, Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)'s BlackBerry Bold and Storm, Palm's Pre, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK)'s N Series all have GPS capabilities, and so will most of the popular smartphones moving forward. The report said the annual shipping rate of smartphones with GPS will increase by 19% through 2014.

The report also said one of the main drivers of growth will be applications and services that take advantage of a user's location, a market that is expected to balloon into a $13.3 billion business by 2013. ABI makes special mention of Google's Android

Survey - Smarphones platform capture 50 percent of all GPS use

GPS Survey - Anyything GEO



Glenn over at Anything Geo has a survey started on Sunday the 25th January and I would ask you to add your vote.... Currently Garmin is out used over Trimble 2:1 and smartphone GPS is 3x the use over Trimble and Garmin combined?

Some interesting early results from a poll we recently launched asking what kind of GPS people are currently using for work… seems Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Garmin are at the top of the responses so far. You can respond to the poll question HERE

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.