Ready to go - Off-board navigation applications rely on geospatial platforms to get to the market quickly and efficiently. The technology is market-ready, but is the market ready for it?

摘要

Turn-by-turn navigation has been around since the early 1990s, but the cost of these systems has limited their adoption That began to change three years ago, when aftermarket products like accessories for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) started to appear,. New Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) that have rapidly dropping price points have sparked a market that is forecast above 10 million units in 2006. While this market is expected to continue to grow, industry observers are anticipating another market that might dwarf these volumes: Off-board navigation. Off-board navigation refers to a wireless location-based service that uses maps and routes calculated on powerful network servers (hence 'off-board') and delivered to cell phones These systems have three major advantages: (1) they can take advantage of up-to-date map data and points of interest (POI), (2) they can run on many common cell phones, (3) flexible pricing models, such as per route, per day and per weekend. While most of these systems use a GPS accessory today, cell phones with embedded GPS are arriving on the market and, as a result, many experts believe that off-board navigation will be rapidly adopted,. Products such as WisePilot from Appello of Sweden have already shown considerable market acceptance as wireless carriers introduce these services to generate new revenue streams.