GPS in 2008

It’s nearly that time of year for end of year wrap ups and to look ahead to 2008. Stephen Colwell at GPS World published a look ahead to 2008 for mass market GPS that’s worth a read. Some interesting takeaways:
- Nearly 10% of US households now own some sort of navigation device
- Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) are likely to see even greater growth in 2008, brought on by new entrants and lower prices, although new entrants may need to dangle better deals in front of retailers to gain shelf space.
- Leading PND manufacturers will likely begin to focus on more specific market niches beyond the mass market… areas like aviation, fleet and enterprise solutions. Not that the potential for mass consumer PNDs seem tapped out or anything, but it’s never too early to start thinking about where future growth will come from… after all the existing 100-200% annual growth rates can’t be expected to be sustainable for much longer.
- Integration of LBS into Smartphones will be a major point of focus, as LBS continues to establish itself as a leading way to boost added arpu for carriers. The above mentioned three figure growth rates in PND sales has to be sending up some red flags to mobile carriers that there really is a hot market for handheld navigation solutions.
- Map makers, Tele Atla and Navteq will innovate like its 1999! Errr spend like drunken sailors to introduce crazy cool new functionality around their maps including 3d and aerial imagery… maybe?
- Price competition in GPS chipsets is expected to get serious as new suppliers get into that market and a new breed of very large buyers (such as smartphone makers and potentially camera makers, etc) will be putting in very large orders and could have significant negotiating leverage.

Prognostications aside, here is the stuff I HOPE makes some serious progress in 2008:

- Better mash-ups of location identifying technologies in a single solution. GPS is obviously the leader but by itself leaves a lot to be desired (ie just flat doesn’t work) in urban canyons or indoors. Need to mashup SIRF, Rosum and Skyhook all into one nice easy to implement package.
- Lower power consumption GPS chips. If you play with GPS and navigation much on a cell phone the first thing you may notice is how damn fast the battery drains. Anyone know how I can pick up shares in NemeriX?
- Connected PNDs. Hint: the P is supposed to stand for Personal. Right now it's personal as in personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut, not personal like Facebook or MySpace.
- LBS will no longer be synonymous with navigation. Let’s hope friend finders, locators/trackers, localized search, LBS gaming all make major inroads, so that navigation is no longer 93%+ of LBS revenues.
- NYC comes up with system to tell me how long I’ll have to wait on the subway platform before the next train arrives.