NEWS
Consumers are turning to smartphones with built-in satellite mapping to help them get around, rather than buying a standalone personal navigation device (PND).
According to market research firm iSuppli, by 2011, virtually all smartphones will sport built-in GPS functionality, and by 2014 there might be little market left for PNDs.
Just a year or two ago, it was hard to find a phone with built-in GPS functionality that actually worked reliably. Now look at the iPhone 3GS. Users can download all three major GPS applications onto it, including TomTom, Navigon, and iGo My Way, and each can turn the phone into a dependable navigator.
More and more phones offer the same feature and people are using their phones as their primary GPS navigator while driving.
The Palm Pre, for example, also offers a great GPS navigator provided by TelNav.
Nonetheless, for now, the market for PNDs is still going strong. According to iSuppli, PNDs will continue to lead the navigation market in 2009, with some 114 million sets predicted to be in use by the end of the year, compared with 57.8 million navigation-enabled smartphones.
New smartphone models are becoming increasingly suitable for use as navigators due to their larger displays, bigger internal storage, faster processors, and most importantly, the increased number of developers creating apps for them. As a matter of fact, all current navigation products on smartphones are applications developed by third parties.
iSuppli predicted that thanks to such factors, the number of people who use the iPhone alone as a navigator will increase from just two million in 2009 to 20 million by 2013.
Comments
There are 9 comments. Join the discussion
1. Anthony Hunt
£50 Satnav Vs £550 iPhone?
No chance!
Only the techno-junkies and those who already have a phone, camera, Mp3 player, satav and game device, will want to spend the vast amount of money required so they can take one device on the road instead of five.
Everyone else will be happy spending less. After all, if your wife takes the car, do you REALLY want her taking your phone? Or vice versa?
If iPhones cost £100 in 2014, then I will happily eat my words.
2. Ollie Clark
How about 200 quid for a Android G1? I'm sure by 2014 there'll be smartphones suitable for sat-nav available for 100GBP.
3. Daz Hughes
It will suit some, but not all. Techno-phobes will not want to cope with the requirements of these integrated devices and they panic if a phone offers more than being "a phone".
With some sat-nav's now being so cheap, some users aren't even bothering with annual subscriptions / map updates - they just buy a new one (I disagree with this from a green point-of-view of course but can see their logic).
And finally, even I fear reaching a junction in an unfamiliar town only to receiving an incoming phone call, no doubt muting the navigation app. Left ? Right ? Straight on ? Who knows !
4. Matt H
One thing they're not taking into account is the hidden cost of an iPhone. I don't want to pay a contract to use my phone, I'm more than happy with Pay As You Go, so I'll stick with my Satnav and mobile being separate!
I'm not going to pay a fortune for an iPhone and then get ripped off each month to use the damn thing!
5. anonymous
Been using a HTC running Windows with GPS and TomTom for a while. Works fine.
6. anonymous
Tom Tom have shot them selves in the foot, by restricting the Window's Mobile version of Tom Tom 7 to a handful of devices.
Currently Running Tom Tom v6 for Windows Mobile on a Dell Axim X50v, with no upgrade path, for my more than capable device. There are also no more map updates for Tom Tom v6 - stopped 18 months ago.
Perhaps the co-incidental Tom Tom for iPhone is them nailing their colours to Apple's mast.
7. Andrew Meredith CEng CITP
Tried to use Tom Tom with a bluetooth GPS dongle on a Treo and gave up. The other functions of this general purpose device continuously got in the way, blanking the screen, crashing it or freezing the thing for long periods. Unusable.
Despite being a died in the wool geek, I much prefer a simple mobile phone that just makes calls/texts and a GPS that just does GPS, but with them all talking to my netbook or notebook when needed.
8. Mark Bridger
I recently went to Portugal and used my iPhone 3G S with TomTom as my primary navigation device.
Whilst I agree that it works reliably, I would say that several times the voice feature did not work, (I use an iTrip FM transmitter) which worked fine with my music.
The other thing is that despite the iPhone being connected via the iTrip, the amount of energy drawn by the GPS meant that on a long trip it was necessary to turn off the TomTom application to preserve the battery as it draws more energy than the charger can provide!
The iPhone also got very hot when using the TomTom app.
Just my 2 cents from a real user ;-)
9. dunski
I think given the number of negative reviews of TomTom, Navigon et al on the iphone in the iphone app store there's still plenty of life in the old sav nav stand alone device yet!