January 03, 2008

Portable Navigation Device Prediction - 500 million units by 2015

Some new research out today from TRG reveals a not-so-surprising trend in the swelling PND market. This from the report... Mobile phone-based navigation is remaking the GPS market. While Garmin and TomTom remain the worldwide market leaders for portable navigation devices today, mobile phone makers Nokia, Motorola, LG and Samsung are expected to lead the way in the near future. This will happen as the worldwide portable navigation market grows from 50 million units in 2007 to more than 500 million units in 2015, according to Telematics Research Group. The change in market leadership derives from the increasing importance of connectivity. Wireless connectivity, either to the Internet or the cellular network, is opening up new applications and services by bringing together accurate location-based data with advanced POI data including pricing, inventory and user-generated content such as ratings of local businesses. TRG estimates 30M dedicated PNDs were sold last year and about 20M navigation-enabled mobile phones for a total of 50M units. Both segments will grow rapidly over the next few years but navigation-enabled mobile phones will start outselling dedicated PNDs next year.
I couldn't agree more... think convergence... the consumer doesn't want more devices so why scoop up that expensive PND when you already have a connected navigation device in your smartphone!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There may be more GPS phones sold than PNDs, but it's no death nail for Garmin and TomTom. Phones have cameras and MP3 players, but there is still a huge market for stand alone devices.