New competitors will threaten the established portable navigation device vendors, said ABI Research.
The enormous market expansion and related price war in the consumer navigation market is no longer new. What has changed is that the resulting attempts at product segmentation and the additional revenue streams for the most competitive portable navigation segment are increasingly arriving in the form of network-connected services.
Over the past few years, higher-end models have offered features such as text-to-speech and real-time traffic information. But as even these features are incorporated into the most inexpensive products by generic device manufacturers, connectivity is becoming the last bastion of feature differentiation.
“By next year, simple one-way traffic information over satellite radio will be found even on the lowest-priced portable navigation devices sold for under $300,” said ABI’s principal analyst Dan Benjamin. “The thin-client players will be able to advertise perpetually updated maps and POI, and lower upfront costs due to reduced storage and processing needs.”
