Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 137

By 2006 the top three brands—Garmin, TomTom, and Magellan—
commanded 85 percent of the U.S market, with Garmin alone accounting for
nearly half. 107 New suppliers and new products poured into the marketplace,
with entrants like long-established mapmaker Rand McNally hoping to cap-
ture part of an estimated three-million-unit North American market. 108 The
number of pnd units shipped in 2006 increased nearly seven-fold over the
prior year, while total revenues grew 262 percent, despite falling prices. 109 At
the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January 2008, low-end units started
at $199 or less, and vendors sought to maintain their profit margins and dif-
ferentiate their new pnds by offering larger screens, voice input of addresses,
and real-time traffic and weather options. 110 Final 2007 figures showed North
American shipments grew to 8 million units and worldwide units shipped
reached 34.8 million. 111 Garmin, maintaining its hold on 47 percent of the U.S.
market and doubling its European shipments, edged past TomTom in 2007 as
the world leader, according to Canalys, a market intelligence consultant to the
high-tech and telecom industry. 112
During 2008 and 2009 two forces converged to disrupt skyrocketing pnd
sales—a financial panic that caused a deep recession and the rise of inexpen-
sive or free gps applications for smartphones. The prospect of smartphones
as competitors to pnds had loomed on the horizon for some time, but techni-
cal limitations kept phones from delivering the same functionality. Cell phones
began to get “smarter” around 1999 as manufacturers found ways to combine
them with pdas. Integrating contact lists and meeting schedules into the phone
itself was a natural marriage, since the same customers used both and disliked
carrying separate devices. Motorola was first that year with a credit-card-size
device called the Clip-On Organizer, which snapped onto the back of the
StarTAC phone, enabling automatic dialing and syncing via a cable to a per-
sonal computer. 113 As carriers improved data transmission capabilities to han-
dle mobile e-mail volume, using phones to access the Internet became more
common. Search engine leader Google began offering its Google Local service—
Internet searches tailored to nearby points of interest—to Java-enhanced cell
phones in 2005, but screen sizes remained a drawback. Trying to hold a
1-by-1.5-inch screen close enough to read a map while driving was “a moving
violation in the making,” observed reviewer Dawn C. Chmielewski in the San
Jose Mercury News . 114 Screen sizes and Internet connectivity continued to grow.
Apple introduced the iPhone on June 29, 2007, in an exclusive deal with at&t
that limited distribution to Apple's stores and the telecom's 1,800 retail outlets