Osman's Location Blog

One thing that strikes me about the global navigation and location markets is the rapid pace of change.

It’s not only the products and technology that are in constant flux, but consumer demand and market strength also fluctuate considerably.

Around this time last year I was researching the ‘Navigation & Location Europe’ conference and I was speaking to lots of LBS application developers who were telling me one thing: They wanted more support from mobile operators. This essentially came down to two points – with the lack of GPS enabled phones on the market they wanted easy and unrestricted access to Cell ID information. But, moreover, they wanted much greater help from operators when it came to promoting and getting their applications to market.

I’ve been hammering through my research on the Indian navigation market of late and have had some really interesting conversations with most of the key companies.

I can say this for sure – everyone is salivating at the sheer possibilities of the market. The numbers alone all point to massive profits and are getting people very excited.

And why not? 240 million mobile phone subscribers and 2 million new cars sold every year is not a bad starting point!

Plus there are other drivers and peculiarities that have caught my interest:

I came across some really interesting news today as huge silicon valley venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has set up a $100 million ‘iFund’ to invest in companies building applications for the iPhone.

What an exciting week for location news. Since I arrived back from the Navigation & Location Europe conference in Amsterdam it’s been all go for Nav&Loc!

TomTom has reported an 83% decline in net profit for the first quarter of 2008. Is this a sign of things to come for the PND market and navigation industry? Are the good times over? Have a look at the official quarterly results here. In 2007 Q1 net profits were €44 million, but you'll notice that Q1 2008 there was a significant decline to €7 million.

 

A new statistic from ABI caught my eye today. ABI has said that studies suggest 34% of all PNDs from firms including Magellan, Mio, TomTom and Dash will ship with onboard connectivity by 2013.

ABI has very kindly provided us with their 'connectivity in navigation' whitepaper, and I've included it amongst many other insightful whitepapers, reports and articles in a report portfolio that you can download absolutely free. Click here to get it!   

It's been a glum couple of weeks for the navigation industry... Is the honeymoon period over? Well judging by recent news it seems that the party may be winding down. GPS chip manufacturers Sirf Technology has certainly felt the crunch. After announcing plans to lay off 7% of their workforce and with share prices sinking the firm is warning of hard times ahead.

Nokia is preparing its response to Apple's iPhone with a device currently codenamed 'tube'. It will support Java and I'm guessing (with Nokia's current commitment to mobile navigation and location) it will include GPS. Vice President of Forum Nokia, Tom Libretto, also provided an entertaining quip and dig at Apple... In reference to Apple having shipped 5 million to 6 million iPhones since launch, Libretto responded "We've done that since dinner on Friday." Nice!

Interesting news today; TomTom shares have fallen 10% after expected sales were down to between 1.8bn and 2.0bn Euros, down from its February estimate of 2.0-2.2bn Euros. The company blamed having to make earlier than expected price cuts. But does this signal a change in fortunes for the navigation industry? For the full article click here