Are manufacturers shifting resources away from GPS navigation devices?
When Motorola's Droid smartphone debuted on Verizon, the inclusion of Google Maps Navigation beta -- real-time, turn-by-turn, rerouting GPS-fueled directions -- sent the stocks of standalone GPS navigation manufacturers Garmin and TomTom crashing.
If a new rumor published by DigiTimesis to be believed, companies are putting their money where their (shareholders') mouths are and moving resources away from the production of standalone personal navigation devices, or PNDs.
Research and development teams at manufacturers Foxconn and Wistron have been shifted to other devices in the face of "declining PND orders," according to the report.
Bizarrely, those resources are being redirected toward e-book readers and mobile Internet devices, or MIDs. While the former is no surprise, the latter is very much so.
MIDs over PNDS? Acronym blasphemy!
Regardless of where the resources are going, the shift indicates that the GPS navigation game will soon no longer be based on hardware, but software.
In reviewing the Droid, I noticed that the Google Maps Navigation feature was very much still beta -- it was glitchy on occasion, sometimes took considerable time to "lock in" GPS connection and fairly unintuitive in terms of finding features (after weeks playing with the phone, I found an alternate routes feature that times each alternative).
Companies such as Garmin and TomTom know this, and I imagine would gladly exit the hardware game. (It's the "free" nature of Google's services that's the game-changer.)
But for Foxconn -- which makes Apple's iPhone, among other devices -- that means there will be less devices to independently develop. That's less tooling and development, and more focus on devices that are capable of many things.
Am I surprised by the news? Hardly. But I'm a little surprised at the speed that the shift is happening. Much of the world's consumers do not own smartphones yet.
Will the death of GPS navigation devices accelerate smartphone adoption? Chicken or the egg?