Fast Action to Ship Units Before Wireless Players Steal OpportunityBoston, MA - June 10, 2005 - The new Strategy Analytics study, `In-vehicle Telematics Systems Market 2004-2011,' shows portable navigation units, such as TomTom GO and Garmin StreetPilot will fill the large near-term opportunity hole left by automotive navigation system suppliers, but after 2006, wireless players will take over the volume consumer market. Before this market deceleration, portable navigation shipments that built rapidly to one million units in 2004 will double, and even triple in some regions, during 2005.
Sales of portable navigation dedicated devices and PDA solutions grew to around 100,000 units per month by the end of 2004. There is a significant amount of latent demand for low priced navigation units in key segments, particularly for mobile professionals, commercial operators and road warriors. So far, this key opportunity has not been addressed by in-vehicle navigation products - which are typically priced at well over $1200.
The growth of in-vehicle markets is barely noticeable, reaching, 1.3 million units in North America, 2.2 million units in Europe and 4.0 million units in Japan, across original equipment and the aftermarket in 2005. After 2005, there will be a stronger competitive response from automotive and wireless players looking to better integrate navigation and location-based services into their feature sets.
"Strong navigation growth can only be maintained over the longer term if navigation capabilities are linked more closely to road traffic information, speed camera locations, entertainment, communications and other `customizable' consumer features," says Joanne Blight, Director, Automotive Practice. . "At a lower price, in-vehicle navigation can be far better positioned to capture a bigger market. There are significant safety benefits if navigation is integrated with other in-vehicle features using a good human machine interface (HMI). The wireless market is increasingly offering more and more multi-featured products, and there also is a clear role for navigation, traffic information and other travel related functions in their features list."