Tuesday, October 21. 2008

Beginning of End of PND Market?

Investor's Daily suggests two scenarios: a few more year of growth driven by lower prices, then death, or it's already dead.

Phones with navigation and other electronic goodies (e-book readers, music players, etc.) will grab consumer dollars. And what of the nav companies that try to fight back, like Garmin with the nuvifone? Jeff Evanson, an analyst at Dougherty & Co. calls it a bomb, noting it is ugly and late.

On the other hand, IBD notes in a second article that NIM and TeleNav are making good money from carriers by providing for fee navigation on phones. Noteworthy in the coverage: IBD notes that NIM and TeleNav get data from NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas (owners Nokia and TomTom are mentioned) but does not mention that the underlying navigation and mapping tools are from deCarta.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Satellite Navigation at 09:02 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

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I own a Nuvi 760 and a Blackjack II that has Google Maps on it and just don't see them overlapping that much. The BJ is my emergency answer when I don't have the Nuvi onboard, but the screen is tiny, the controls are hard to use and it does not provide turn by turn verbal directions, not to mention speaking the name of the road. They can speed up the processor all they want, but until the user interface becomes more practical --note that the iPhone which may have the form factor for that, does not claim sufficient accuracy to navigate -- I think the markets will coexist for more than two years.

#1 Sam Bacharach on 2008-10-22 08:49 (Reply)

Exactly - I have a cheap pnd (Myguide 3100) and a nokia n95 which runs the nokia maps app. Nice as the phone is the Myguide beats it hands down in terms of usability (it's simple!), screen size etc. I say there will always be pnds for navigation, some people just prefer one function tools.

#1.1 Charlie Arnot on 2008-10-27 04:21 (Reply)

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