Global shipments of Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) will peak at about 50 million units per year in 2012 and slightly decline thereafter, according to a a reports from Berg Insight.

It says growing shipments in emerging markets are not likely to fully compensate for the decline in Europe and North America, where higher adoption of mobile handset-based navigation services will become the primary solution for occasional users.

In fact, Berg Insight forecasts that 88 per cent of PNDs shipped worldwide in 2015 will have integrated cellular connectivity, with vendors increasingly looking at value-added services enabled by new devices with wireless connectivity.

However, it also stresses that multiple navigation solutions and device types are likely to co-exist to some extent, with most PNDs and in-car systems providing a better user experience than many handset-based services.

André Malm, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight, said: “The connected PND segment has had a slow start, but now seems to be on-track as business models have been refined... In only a few years time, wireless connectivity will be taken for granted also in Personal Navigation Devices."

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