The year 2005 marked the first successful marriage of cellular and navigation technologies, resulting in shipments of around 1 million on-board and off-board systems, mainly in the fourth quarter. Supported by the phenomenal growth recorded in the PND segment, handset based personal navigation solutions are expected to grow by 86 percent year-on-year.

 “We are very optimistic about the market potential for mobile personal navigation services”, says Johan Fagerberg, senior analyst, Berg Insight. “There is already a wide range of navigation solutions available for both smartphones and Java-enabled handsets. Technologies like A-GPS, Indoor-GPS and Galileo will soon enable handset manufacturers to include satellite positioning in mass-market models for the European market. This will radically improve the market conditions for navigation and all other location-based services.”

 Jentro, Route66 and TomTom were the top three providers of handset based personal navigation solutions during 2005. Thanks to a successful final quarter on the German market, Jentro was able to snatch the top spot with its off-board solution for Java-handsets. Meanwhile Route66 and TomTom reinforced their market positions with on-board solutions for Symbian OS smartphones.

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