ABI Research forecasts that shipments of GPS devices such as smart watches and cycling computers, will grow 30 percent by 2019 despite the emergence smart garments and other wearable computers.
The total market for dedicated GPS devices in 2013 was estimated at 35 million units, which is expected to grow almost 30 percent over the forecast period, despite accelerated declining Western PND markets, according to a new ABI's new research on location devices. More importantly, the ominous threat of converged wearables will certainly eat into the available market, but it is not expected to have the same dramatic effect as smartphone apps had on PNDs.
“GPS Fitness watches are not expected to suffer significant revenue declines over the forecast period despite the presence of smartwatches and smart eyewear,” said ABI Senior Analyst Patrick Connolly. “Clearly GPS-enabled eyewear has huge potential, while cycling computers is a market companies like Polar Pioneer, Magellan, and DeLorme have all moved into in the past 18 months. New markets are also emerging around action cameras and eBikes, with Garmin, Bosch and TEASI all active. There are also signs that innovation around NFC (Active Mind Technology Inc.) and BLE (Qualcomm, etc.) can drive new growth in the golf and personal tracking spaces, with GPS IC vendors like CSR and uBlox seeing significant growth in the latter over the past 12 months.”
VP and practice director Dominique Bonte adds, “Short-term, these are the markets that will enable Garmin, TomTom and others to transition away from the PND market, creating sustainability as they move longer term towards new opportunities in automotive and commercial. For GPS IC vendors, it is clear that these markets are now large enough to justify new IC designs capable of meeting the demand for always-on, high accuracy, ubiquitous location.”
