The worldwide market for GPS units will reach 900 million by 2013, according to ABI
Research's
"Global Navigation Satellite Positioning Solutions" report.
ABI said that in-car navigation would remain the most important GPS application but that the devices would also be used in many other consumer, business and industrial environments such as telematics and asset tracking.
“Personal navigation devices for in-car use will be increasingly complemented by converged solutions based on GPS-enabled handsets for pedestrian navigation and location-based services,” said ABI Research principal analyst Dominique Bonte.
The company also said that low-cost GPS would be possible in all mobile devices by 2013. GPS in mobile phones and other consumer electronics could spur applications such as automatic geo-tagging for camera phone pictures. Location-based social networking could also follow.