GSM growth to spur GPS-enabled handset proliferation

More than 550 million GPS-enabled mobile phones are expected to ship by 2012, according to a new report from ABI Research.
“While most CDMA handsets are already GPS-enabled and GPS is set to become a standard feature in GSM smartphones, GSM feature phones are next on the agenda to be equipped with GPS technology,” says ABI Research principal analyst Dominique Bonte. “GPS chipset vendors increasingly target handsets, looking for new markets and spurred on by the recent dramatic growth of personal navigation devices.”
A variety of new location-based applications are gaining popularity, including social-networking-based functions like sharing points of interest and geo-tagged pictures, said ABI. However, in order to accommodate lower-end phones, GPS chipsets will have to be smaller and cheaper and use less power, said ABI. Single-chipset technology and forthcoming combination chips – that include GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on one die – could solve that problem, said the firm.