Personal GPS Will Be As Common As Cell Phones


by Peter Boston - Date: 2006-12-11 - Word Count: 532 Share This!

GPS turn-by-turn driving directions have been available on luxury cars for more than a decade. The initial factory option cost was up to $2,000 with mapping software updates on top of that. As popularity and production increase the cost of GPS technology and devices decrease so that now turn-by-turn driving directions are available across even economy model lines at a fraction of the original cost.

Qualcomm, a leading manufacturer of cell phones, estimates that about 200 million cell phones world wide are presently equipped with GPS-enabled handsets. Industry experts expect this number to grow at a compound rate of as much as 40 percent annually. That means that the number of GPS-enabled cell phone handsets will double in about two years and then double again two years after that if the growth rate estimates are correct.

Because the initial cost for GPS-enabled cell phones started at a much lower level than vehicle GPS navigation systems we can draw some reasonable confidence in the fantastic growth of cell phone GPS. Major US cellular service providers have acted on the trend. Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint/Nextel each offer robust GPS services on a growing selection of smartphone handsets.

Turn-by-turn driving directions spoken through the cell phone handset speaker and shown in 2-D or 3-D on the handset display are but one feature of existing cellular GPS service. Even people who have been ho-hum to GPS sit up and take notice the first time they actually use a GPS navigation system to get turn-by-turn directions to an unknown destination. It saves time. It prevents aggravation, and for many solitary drivers it relieves the stress of navigating through unknown and unfamiliar neighborhoods.

If your cell phone is GPS enabled, and you subscribe to one of the cellular GPS service plans, then your GPS navigation system goes with you everywhere you go. Hop in a friend's car to find a factory outlet on the other side of town, punch in the address on your handset, and off you go. If you get diverted from the planned route the GPS navigation system will know that and calculate a new route for you from your present location.

The next time gas prices hit the $3.00 mark wouldn't it be nice to know which gasoline stations in your current vicinity have the lowest prices? Looking for an Italian restaurant in a new city and do not know the names of any? Both of those tasks are a piece of cake with current cellular GPS services.

You do not always travel by car. Because mapping software is kept up to date by your cellular phone company you can always download to your handset the most recent and most detailed street maps of almost every city in the USA and Canada. Pedestrian oriented features are constantly improving. Instead of an Italian restaurant may you want to know the nearest bus stop or taxi stand.

Cellular GPS service is currently priced at about $10.00 per month by the major cellular phone companies. If you do not travel frequently enough to justify subscribing to a monthly plan, Verizon has a 24 hour plan so you can get cellular GPS service on demand for just a few dollars only when you want it.


Related Tags: gps, cell phones, gps-enabled cell phones, verizon

(C) Peter Boston. Make sense of technology terms: gps cell phone, gps locator, and handheld gps unit

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: