News
444m GPS phones by 2011
Tim Green Nov 1 2007, 1:19pm
Global shipments of GPS-enabled mobiles will quadruple to 444 million units by 2011, says iSuppli.
The rate of increase will mean 29.6 per cent of all phones shipped will have GPS capability. iSupply projects that LBS services such as user location, turn-by-turn navigation, location search, tracking, information services and social networking.
could drive up ARPUs.
Some of the growth in the US will come from the ‘E911’ government mandates, which requires all operators to precisely locate the position of wireless callers making emergency 911 calls.
“Besides cameras, multimedia capabilities and connectivity solutions, mobile-handset OEMs increasingly are investigating the integration of GPS functionality in mobile devices as a value-added product differentiator,” said Tina Teng, analyst, wireless communications at iSuppli. “Wireless carriers are looking at introducing various new GPS-based, revenue-generating services to increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).”
