London — Sales of worldwide personal navigation devices (PNDs) will grow to more than 100 million units annually by 2011, said ABI Research.
Although PNDs face competition from cellular phone GPS and in-dash GPS in new cars, ABI said PNDs “will remain the preferred form factor for use in the car but will be complemented by handset-based systems for pedestrian navigation and new use cases such as outdoors. New form factors, such as portable media players, ultra mobile PCs, Internet tablets and mobile Internet devices will also appear.”
ABI said GPS in cellular phones will reach a sales volume of 21 million units in North America by 2012 and it will serve as a user base for new location-based features such as “search, friend finder and tracking features.”
In addition, “connected” service such as real-time traffic and up-to-date map content will become a standard feature on PNDs, cellular handsets and OEM in-dash systems, said ABI.
