Boom predicted for portable navigation on mobiles

According to Telematics Research Group (TRG), sales of portable navigation devices are set to increase ten-fold over the next eight years, with the huge take-up coming from the the GPS functionality being embedded into mobile phones.

While Garmin and TomTom are predicted to remain global market leaders for PNDs, mobile phone makers such as Nokia, Motorola, LG and Samsung are expected to show the way in the near future...
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TRG sees the worldwide portable navigation market growing from 50 million units in 2007 to more than 500 million units in 2015.
30 million dedicated PNDs were sold last year and about 20 million navigation-enabled mobile phones.According the TRG, navigation-enabled mobile phones will start outselling dedicated PNDs next year, with the combined segments reaching annual sales of more than 220 million by the end of 2012.

This change in market leadership is partly due to wireless connectivity 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.

The market researchers suggest that by 2015, Nokia could be selling 180 million devices with GPS capability, followed by Samsung and Motorola (both 70 million), LG (60 million), and TomTom and Garmin both 25 million.

So we see that TomTom and Garmin are adding connectivity to their devices, and mobile phone makers are adding maps. Apparently PNDs makers have to find new ways to compete for smartphone users.

ps. Recent efforts to accelarate location based technologies :

During the Mobile World Congress 2008-Barcelona, Nokia has introduced the N78 including geotagging software and assisted GPS, also the upload/sharing site Ovi acquired with Twango and their own A-GPS backbone implementation. The strategy of Nokia is to provide its own infrastructure for location data so that applications running on Nokia phones can obtain accurate location data anywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, Motorola also keeps moving. The company has joined a technical forum (CSR-Cambridge, England) that has been established to encourage equipment makers and operators to work together to accelerate development of location technologies. The idea is to test the E-GPS, a system providing real-time GPS navigation embedded in a mobile handset that is said to improve the responsiveness and availability of accurate position information compared with assisted GPS (A-GPS) in a live cellular network. More info, here.