Research firm Canalys estimates that global shipments of PND’s rose 14% year-over-year in Q3 2008, but much of that growth is coming from the North American and Asia-Pacific markets. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa shipments are down 6%, while GPS-enabled smartphone shipments soared, from 4.7 million units in Q2 to 10.4 million units in Q3. It’s bad news for PND manufacturers when smartphones outship traditional GPS units. And it only looks worse when economic considerations are taken into account. Everyone is cutting back on unnecessary spending, but with most of us considering mobile phones a definite necessity, it’s PND sales that will suffer.
Unfortunately PND manufacturers can’t have this. Despite a 14% increase in overall shipments in Q3, the overall PND market value declined a huge 21% year-on-year. While the three market leaders Garmin, TomTom, and Mio continue to grow their respective market shares, despite a rough Q3, all other vendor shipments are at their lowest levels since Q2 2007. Odds are we’ll see many more PND vendors go the way of Dash Navigation or out of business entirely in the coming year.
That’s great news for location-based application and service providers such as Loopt. True to previous rumors, the company has just partnered with Qualcomm subsidiary, SnapTrack, to utilize the company’s QPoint location-based server software. Most location-based applications result in a cent or two charged to developers and wireless providers each time there is a location query, but the partnership results in Loopt paying a fixed fee for unlimited queries for each user through QPoint. Loopt is one of few mobile applications that has a substantial user base; the one brick wall standing in the way of the company’s mainstream mobile proliferation has been the cost of usage.
Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt, hopes to eventually partner with all handset manufacturers using Qualcomm chips and with the new cost-effectiveness of Loopt, extend the service to additional wireless providers as well.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the future of Loopt will look like, and whether the portable navigation device will make it through the next couple of years. Whether or not PND’s stick around, it seems the time is now for mobile application developers/wireless providers/handset manufacturers to start mingling, signing deals, and partnering up to be in a competitive position when the LBS revolution really explodes.
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