16 January 2008
GPS (Global Positioning System) enabled mobile phones are set to become a key industry trend, Swedish analysts said yesterday.
According to a new report from Berg Insight, there will be 560 million of the handsets in use by 2012 - a big leap from last year's total of 175 million.
Driving the rise will be European customers, with GPS phone use to increase eighteen times over on the continent.
Berg Insight analyst Andre Malm claimed that last year marked "the breakthrough" for the handsets - and added that the rapidly-increasing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook would inflate GPS-enabled phone sales still further.
"The availability of accurate position data in mobile devices creates exciting new opportunities for developers of local search, navigation and social networking applications", he claimed.
"Nokia and Google will be two of the foremost players in this arena, but there is a good chance that the development will also give birth to the next Facebook or MySpace."
Developed by the US government, GPS is the only global satellite navigation system currently operational.
However, the development of alternative GPS systems - with mainland Europe's Galileo and Russia's Glonass both scheduled to come on line within five years, could also be a key factor in the sector's move into the mainstream, Mr Malm added.
© 2008 Adfero Ltd
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