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.

Mobile handsets present a unique challenge for application providers in that the interface, computing power and bandwidth constraints are severely limiting. The complexity of wireless networks, and the breadth of diverse platforms and models and vendors add to the difficulties. On top of that they have to deal with the GIS data and mapping on mobile handsets.

Application providers now have to deliver all that at once: Location-based middleware solution, GIS engine, client server, and even (if they plan to make some money out of the application) the ad server.

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.

Slowly but surely, the sensor and chip manufacturing industry seem to be a) talking to each other / buying each other, or b) talking about the need to make location work on mobile devices.

It’s about time.

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