GPS Market on the Verge of Decline

location based services

The ghost of ups and downs is hovering over the market of GPS nowadays. Over the past years, the more GPS devices put on the market for sale, the more decrease was noticed.
The 2006 market of GPS experienced its tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline. During the second quarter of 2006, GPS vendors released 1.4 million devices, a 26.3 per cent decrease from the same quarter one year.
Whereas, GPS vendors, for the first half of the year, ushered in 2.9 million units, which came down 21.4 per cent from the 3.7 million units put on the market during the first half 2005
The past ten quarters have provided a combination of factors that have led to this milestone: the exit of vendors from the handheld market, the shift of vendor focus from handheld devices to converged mobile devices (i.e. smartphones), and the increasing popularity of converged mobile devices overall,” said Ramon Llamas, research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Markets Team. “Looking ahead, we expect additional quarters of decline and a flattening out of shipment activity before a return to growth.
In order to do that, vendors must discover more market segments, relevant applications, and improved usability beyond personal information management.
The inclusion of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS have kept handheld devices relevant, particularly for core users. However, more applications must be deployed to reach more users and eventually bring about a stabilizing effect to shipment activity.
Given below are the highlighted vendors:
(1)Acer: Acer is the vendor who suffered the largest year-over-year decline, but still managed to remain ahead of other vendors to lay claim to the number 5 position worldwide. Acer’s position as the number 5 vendor worldwide is hardly assured, with a number of vendors trailing closely behind.
(2)Palm: Despite posting a year-over-year decline, Palm remained by far the worldwide market leader of handheld devices with shipments totaling more than the next two vendors combined. In addition to being the leader of handheld devices, Palm has also developed its converged mobile devices, with shipments surpassing its handheld devices.
(3)Dell: Holding steady in the number 3 position was U.S.-based Dell. Over the course of the quarter, Dell continued to tout the Axim X51, having phased out its Axim X30 and X50 products from a year ago. Unlike Palm and HP, Dell has not released a converged mobile device to the market.(4) HP: HP remained the clear number 2 vendor of handheld devices worldwide, with double the shipment volume of the number 3 vendor, Dell. Like Palm, HP has been developing its own line of converged mobile devices, but during Q2 HP’s handheld devices still outpaced its converged mobile devices.(5) Mio: Despite posting a year-over-year, decrease this quarter, Taiwanese vendor Mio was able to post the smallest year-over-year decrease of the top five vendors, and supplanted Acer for the number 4 position worldwide after trailing by just a thousand units last quarter in the process.