US GPS navigation market picks up speed — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Shipment volume triples in 2006} US GPS navigation market picks up speed

13 Mar 2007 at 17:58 GMT Timo Poropudas

2006 proved to be the year the US portable navigation device (PND) market came to life. Canalys estimates that 2.9 million PNDs shipped in the US in 2006, representing a growth rate of 269 percent on 2005.

Just over 50 percent of the total unit volume in 2006 shipped in Q4, with the PND being one of the “must-have” consumer electronics items in the traditional Thanksgiving Black Friday sales promotions. Prices fell below USD 200, helping to fuel demand.

For the full year Garmin was the US market leader with 50.3 percent market share and growth in line with the overall market. Magellan and TomTom battled it out for second spot while the Thanksgiving promotions opened the door for new competitors such as Mio Technology, which recently announced its intention to acquire Navman, to emerge and make an immediate impact.

Consumer electronics retailers, such as Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA and RadioShack, as well as national retailers such as WalMart, Target and CostCo and online resellers like Amazon all had bumper quarters.

“With a ‘car-park’ of over 200 million cars and light trucks in the US, the 2.9 million devices shipped in 2006 is just scratching the surface of US market potential,” said Canalys VP and principal analyst Chris Jones.

“We expect the PND to become established as a consumer electronics category in its own right in 2007 and the market will at least double over the coming year.”

As in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), where Canalys reports that 10.1 million PNDs shipped in 2006, many more new entrants will be attracted to the opportunity in the US and will launch products in 2007 based on either Navteq or TeleAtlas map data.

Local search, maps and navigation on connected mobile devices are all areas of growing interest to companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Adding connectivity to PNDs will enable the delivery more dynamic information as well as existing web and new peer-generated content. This was the key new theme for the mobile navigation sector discussed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas back in January and is coming to devices in 2007.

US portable navigation device hardware vendor market shares 2006, 2005
Vendor	Shipments 06	Market Share 06	Shipments 05	Market Share 06	Change 06/05
Garmin	1,443,150	50.30 %	389,910	50.20 %	270.10 %
Magellan	415,160	14.50 %	181,460	23.30 %	128.80 %
TomTom	396,530	13.80 %	100,590	12.90 %	294.20 %
Mio Technology	119,690	4.20 %	610	0.10 %	19521.30 %
Lowrance	66,420	2.30 %	32,720	4.20 %	103.00 %
Others	426,870	14.90 %	71,990	9.30 %	493.00 %
Total	2,867,820 100.0%	100.o%	777,280	100.00 %	269.00 %