Satellite Navigation Market Continues To Soar Worldwide

January 15th, 2008

The global market for satellite navigation hardware continued its scorching pace in 2007, resulting in big profits for the major hardware manufacturers, and analysts predict sales will grow more than $20 billion by early next decade.

Finding your way to your Condo Hotels has never been easier. Satellite Navigation has become less of a luxury and more of a standard with more affordable GPS systems like Tom Tom. Those Tom Tom’s are pretty kick ass. A couple people I know go them for Christmas so I had some time to play with them a bit and think I will buy one. I can’t find my way around my own town, much less another one so it is probably a good investment for me. I’m terrible with directions. It makes no sense because I am a guy. I’m one of those guys that actually stops at a gas station to ask for directions. Can you believe that?

With the big money being made in the GPS markets, other countires are trying to jump on the bandwagon by getting their own Independent Satellite Navigation Systems.

“There is a symbolic reason to deploy these systems. That is the idea that they would like to be independent of any dependencies on U.S. controlled assets,” said Brad Parkinson, a retired U.S. Air Force officer and one of the original architect’s of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), corresponding by email.

ABI Research, a market research firm in Oyster Bay, N.Y., estimates last year’s market for satellite navigation hardware was $33 billion, a $6 billion increase from 2006. The company attributed the growth to falling prices for all types of hardware and dramatic volume increases in the sales of Portable Navigation Devices (PND) and satellite navigation-equipped mobile phones in Europe and North America.

Magellan GPS of Santa Clara, Calif., the world’s third largest maker of satellite navigation devices, does not release financial data, but marketing director Robert Snow said sales last year far exceeded the company’s expectations.

“Our consumer satellite navigation products saw the biggest growth in North America, but Magellan also made substantial inroads in Europe,” Snow said.

Spcae.com has an article with more numbers on the Satellite Navigation Industry that is expected to grow global sales to more than 100 million PNDs, 62 million satellite navigation-equipped phones, 14 million manufacturer-installed car systems and 4 million after-market car systems by 2011.