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The concept of a GPS receiver inbuilt into your mobile phone is a smart one – so why don’t we have one yet? Well, we may not have to wait much longer as 25 percent of WCDMA (3G) handsets will offer GPS by the end of 2008, claims a recent study by US-based ABI Research.
There are four important reasons for this, says principal analyst Alan Varghese. “The first factor inducing vendors to include GPS is regulatory, that is, the mandates for emergency calling in the various regions. The second is competition: the CDMA carriers who have had GPS integrated in their handsets since 2002 have been turning on Location Based Services over the past year. A third is economic: carriers continue to look for ways to increase data ARPU and recoup some of their high licensing costs for 3G spectrum. Finally, there is consumers’ need for portable navigation and other applications driven by location awareness capabilities in the network.”
“SiRF has been the leader in the GPS IC space for the last several years, but in the mobile phone segment, Atmel/u-blox, Global Locate, GloNav, Nemerix, Texas Instruments, and u-Nav will soon be nipping at their heels,” he added.
