Sharper Image to Sell Its Own GPS Device

Details: Sharper Image is licensing technology from Polaris Media Research, Inc. The product line will be manufactured by Ubistar, in Korea.

The products will feature a state-of-the-art, user friendly interface that will make Sharper Image GPS receivers unique in the market. Other features include multimedia functions such as MP3 playback, image viewing and games. The units will also be loaded with over 6 million points of interest. The first Sharper Image GPS products will be launched in early 2008 at leading mid-tier and better retailers.

Isn’t it sort of late for this “cutting edge” company to be delving into GPS? How can it possibly compete? Perhaps just having the Sharper Image brand is enough…

- Trading Markets

Podcast: Defining and Redefining Location-based Services

This week we tackle a question that came up in our work recently: Just what constitutes a “location-based service.” The topic emerged as we discussed which posts here at APB should be tagged “LBS.” In this podcast we tease out our own definitions and explore the future of the term. We apologize for the less than optimal sound quality; we hope the content is worth the effort. The podcast is 16 minutes long and was recorded on November 19, 2007.

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MapQuest Navigator 5.0 Competes on Price

Most of the cell phone-based personal navigation applications are going for $9.95 per month. I’ve been using Verizon’s VZNavigator and I like it because it’s fast and convenient to use a phone-based navi device but I do have a problem with the price. I’ll probably evaluate the new MapQuest solutions that they announced today for $4.99 per month but only certain phones (mostly Blackberry 8300 or 8800) and carriers are supported right now like AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. It’s about time for AT&T and T-Mobile which lag other carriers for LBS apps. A short video from MapQuest demos the MapQuest app if you don’t have one of these carriers.

The Street/Seeking Alpha Look at Garmin Decision to Bail on TA Acquisition

The Street says:

The pros:

- forced TomTom to pay more
- relieved stockholders

The cons:

- still has to find a long term solution for mapping data; may have to build its own
- "But is it [it is] unclear how the Navteq contract gives Garmin the market leadership it sought in its bid for Tele Atlas." (Yair Reiner, an analyst with CIBC Capital Markets in a note to clients)
- where will Garmin get features it said it wanted in bidding on TA: "more realistic representation of surroundings, improved mobile search capabilities, including Internet-enabled local search, and extend itself into newer segments like in-dash, portable and mobile-phone navigation… real-time content such as traffic data."

Seeking Alpha says:

- very big win
- sealed long temr deal with NAVTEQ
- forced 45% premium payment by TomTom
- avoided debt
- stock up and good holiday ads

BusinessWeek: Paperless Map is Killer App

It’s a sort of review of how hot navigation is. Of note, the list of future possible acquistions:

Analysts say possible targets include TeleNav, which supplies navigation software to carriers, and its rival Networks In Motion of Aliso Viejo, Calif. Also in the spotlight is Kirkland (Wash.)-based Inrix, spun off from Microsoft in 2004. It supplies live traffic data on 55,000 miles of U.S. roads. Its sole competitor, Traffic.com, was bought earlier this year by Navteq, and is becoming part of Nokia.

All of those (save Traffic.com) I believe, have some relationship with deCarta.