ABI Research: GPS-enabled mobile phones to bypass the economic downturn
By Dusan Belic on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 6:32 PM PST In Research
Shipments of GPS-enabled handsets will hit a speed-bump in 2009, but will still manage to post year-to-year unit growth through the current economic downturn. According to a new market study by ABI Research, while global mobile phone shipments are expected to drop by 4-5% in 2009, GPS-enabled phones will climb to 240 million units, an increase of 6.4% over 2008 — all thanks to the ongoing demand for feature-rich smartphones.
Although slowing slightly this year, demand for smartphones will increase at an average annual unit shipment rate of 19% through 2014. During the period, GPS chipsets will continue to penetrate this segment with 9 of every 10 smartphones containing GPS in 2014 — compared with one in three last year.
Other factors that will continue the trend toward the inclusion of GPS functionality in handsets include the spread of open source operating systems such as Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android, and the continuing emergence of navigation and map-based applications for handsets…
More information about ABI Research’s report is available from their website.
