GPS Business News editor Ludovic Privat and I have agreed to disagree about the PND market …

I believe we are seeing the end of the PND growth in the US and Europe. In CEE, the market is just starting and the growth is there – as well as in the Middle East, where demand not only exceeds supply but users want more than what’s currently on offer.

China’s PND market is not a healthy one:  too much on offer, map piracy, inadequate profits for the hardware guys...

Ultimately, I believe the PND form factor doesn’t offer enough advantages to enable the smartphone to compete. This doesn’t mean there is no future for such devices, but I think we’ve seen the growth peak, and the more Blackberry, Google and Apple launch new smartphones (plus all the other brands piggybacking on the touch screen frenzy), the quicker the PND will become unattractive to the urban masses.

Ludovic was less harsh than I, and listed the PND’s advantages over other devices: bigger screen, better UI, better battery, faster TTFF, falling prices and generally better targeted usage.

Indeed, it’s the targeting that will make all the difference. iPhone owners are not the TomTom crowd and vice versa. Navigation is for people with cars. The rest - for pedestrians and public transport users – it’s LBS, pedestrian navigation, discovery or local search.  Which means, Ludovic, that except for navigation, the mobile phone will win on all counts. I just can't imagine that people will use a PND to find a restaurant if they’re not driving.

So we agree then, that the targeting is different, the apps are different, and the distribution ... well, the PND is a product on the shelves rather than a bundled service, and retailers and distributors are pushing it via advertising and marketing, and … Google can’t provide it for free.

This is not the case for pedestrian navigation – often described as the raison d'etre for mobile maps. Ludovic mentioned that it’s clearly not working well right now. I think Tele Atlas only launched an official pedestrian map earlier this month, and nothing on the market right calculates routes for pedestrians who hop onto public transport for part or parts of the journey.  (Navitime announced something today but I’m waiting for details).

One device that we both agree was an unexpected success is the speed camera detector. I know people in Korea who are asking about "Coyote"!

At €199 plus €12 a month, who would have thought there was a market for (a) a subscription-based telematics product, and (b) a single-function device that costs the same as cheap multi-purpose PND!

While the Coyote could pay for itself by helping the user to avoid speeding fines, nav systems can also include speed camera detection or location data.

Ludovic went as far as to say that 10-12% of PNDs sold next year will be connected  –  that’s 1.5 million devices in Europe by end-2009. How many cars are equipped with connected subscription-based telematics systems right now???