Over one million GPS-chip phones sold

9 May 2002 at 22:42 GMT Timo Poropudas

US based telecom vendor Qualcomm has announced that, according to its own figures, more than one million gpsONE enabled mobile devices have been sold around the world. The company says that handsets with its GPS chips in them are in commercial use on CDMA networks in South Korea, Japan and the US.

Qualcomm claims these figures mean that its technology is fast becoming the world's most widely deployed personal location system for mobile phones. In Japan, where its chips are fitted into most new CDMA handsets sold for the KDDI au services, as many as 280,000 new GPS-enabled phones were shipped in April alone.

The gpsOne services incorporate Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem chipsets and system software in the handset. The US manufacturer also uses SnapTrack's SnapSmart location server software. SnapTrack is a Qualcomm subsidiary. According to BWCS website Alcatel, Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens have all signed similar development deals as they attempt to clamber up the mobile location based services value chain.