Trend of GPS-Enabled SmartPhones in Personal Navigation Device Market

Nowadays technology convergence is a new trend with more and more feature sets being integrated into conventional mobile phone. Among all those new features, GPS (Global Positioning System) is one of the most common one especially for mid to high end mobile devices due to its useful functionality and widely ecosystem support. Based on the latest research report from iSuppli, the trend of GPS capable mobile phone is on the way to replace the current available PNDs (Portable Navigation device) and will potential overtake them by year 2014.

According to iSuppli’s report, PNDs was dominating the worldwide market with 86.5 million units as compared to GPS capable smartphones at 39 million units since last year. And this year the units have increased to 114 million PNDs while the GPS enabled smartphones continue to climb up to 57.8 million units. As expected, popularity of GPS-capable smartphone continue to grow with 130 million of PNDs and 117 million of GPS ready mobile devices by 2011. And by 2014, the smartphones with GPS capability are expected to overtake conventional PNDs in terms of market share with significant boost to 305 million units versus 128 million of PNDs.

No doubt, this is mainly contributed by strong software eco-partners support that able to improve the system user interface with larger screen display support and more importantly, consumers no longer need to carry a dedicated PND as now they can have an all-in-one smartphones device with multifunction capability including GPS module while on the move.