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Worldwide Portable GPS Doubles; Garmin Takes Lead

Reading, United Kingdom — The worldwide portable GPS market more than doubled during the second quarter of 2007, and Garmin overtook TomTom as the market leader in worldwide sales, according to a new report from Canalys.

More than 7.4 million mobile navigation devices shipped during the quarter, up 116 percent from the second quarter in 2006. More than 90 percent of these were personal navigation devices (PNDs).

Converged devices such as smartphones accounted for 6 percent of the total market and the U.S. share of the worldwide market rose to a new peak of 26 percent, up from 15 percent a year ago.

After two years as the market leader by several percentage points, TomTom was narrowly overtaken by Garmin as the global leader, in part, due to exceptionally high growth in United States where Garmin is the leader, said Canalys.

Garmin worldwide shipments for all types of portable navigation totaled 1.85 million units compared with TomTom’s 1.81 million units.

Europe still represents the majority of device shipments — around 60 percent for the quarter, with healthy growth of 82 percent over the period a year ago. But growth in the United States grew by almost 300 percent above the period last year, the report said.

Fourth-placed Magellan saw the biggest jump among the market leaders, enjoying a year-on-year climb of 548 percent worldwide, again largely due to massive growth in the United States where it became the No. 2 vendor behind Garmin.

“It is difficult to point to another part of the high-tech industry that is so dynamic and growing as fast as the navigation sector,” said Chris Jones, Canalys VP and principal analyst. “The landscape of the navigation industry is changing before our eyes,” Jones added, claiming, “Nokia is already starting to make its presence felt with its GPS-enabled handsets, such as the N95, and its navigation solution packages. It is already poised just outside the top five after relatively little time in the market.”

Converged devices such as smartphones “have the potential to disrupt the market for the PND vendors who currently account for 90 percent of the unit volume. PND vendors are moving into connected devices themselves, to facilitate the upload of user-generated location content, map updates, traffic information, etc. But moving to connected devices brings lots of challenges around channels and overcoming users’ reluctance to subscribe to data services,” the report said.
Worldwide Integrated On-board Mobile GPS Navigation Device Market
Harware Vendor Market Shares Q2 2007, Q2 2006

Source:Canalys estimates
Notes: Includes PNDs, PMPs and smart mobile devices with integrated GPS used for turn-by-turn road navigation.

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