Handset navigation market poised for robust growth
By Zhuang Guangping
When travelling to an unfamiliar city and not knowing where the shopping center is, it is easy to solve if you have one navigation mobile phone. Now, the navigation mobile phone can not only guide you in the exact route, but also provides with the bus routes and walking distance for choice, even can calculate the taxi cost.
When the cities are growing bigger and bigger and the traffic is more and more complicated, the navigation service is accepted by the majority of mobile phone users and playing a role in the easy travel and information management. A brand new industry---navigation software and service emerges against this background.
According to the experts, in the early days, the navigation service is mainly used in car navigation device and handheld convenient terminal. And it is only a kind of terminal after-sales services. With the rise of mobile phone navigation market, the software and service gradually becomes an independent industry, thus promoting the development of new navigation applications and the improvement of user experience.
Mobile internet navigation service started a little late, but has a quite fast development. PDAger Mobility Inc. established in 2001 is the earliest provider for the mobile navigation service, and also one high-tech enterprise which is based on the positioning service of Telecom operator and growing with the development of the navigation industry.
Currently, with the increasingly enlargement of the mobile internet navigation service market, PDAger Mobility Inc. has developed into one navigation information service provider which can provide the complete solutions such as online mobile phone navigation client terminal, offline mobile phone navigation client terminal and industry positioning applications. During 8 years, mobile value-added service market has gone through several ups and downs, but PDAger Mobility Inc. always been committed to the mobile phone positioning service and keeps growing fast. "The development of PDAger Mobility Inc. has connection with the fast growth of mobile phone navigation service market in China." Yan Honglin, General Manager of PDAger Mobility Inc. said.
The scale of mobile phone navigation service market is closely related to the output of navigation mobile phones. "GPS navigation currently has become the synonym of high-end mobile phone. With the price decrease of GPS hardware and software system, the mobile phone costing less than 1000 RMB can be equipped with the navigation function without problem." Yan Honglin feels happy that the problem of terminal bottleneck is alleviating. 1021 thousand navigation mobiles have been sold in China in 2007 and 4783 thousand in 2008. As more and more consumers accept it, the navigation application has gradually become the standard configuration for the mobile phone.
In 2004, PDAger Mobility Inc. developed the voice wireless navigation service based on the mobile internet; in 2006, PDAger Mobility Inc. developed the 2nd generation of voice navigation product; currently, the 4th generation of voice navigation product developed by PDAger Mobility Inc. has achieved the full range of navigation service, location information search, reminder of city and highway electronic eyes. The continuous upgrading is the technology development theme of the navigation information service providers represented by PDAger Mobility Inc.
"The mobile phone navigation is becoming more and more user-friendly and precise," Yan Honglin feels very confident for the future of navigation service, "The technology upgrading of the navigation service market never has end. This is also the power and hope of the market. Our future product goal is to develop 3D map which provides the precise walking navigation."
Technological innovation is the inexhaustible power to push forward the navigation service enterprises. GPSone technology adopted by PDAger Mobility Inc. has integrated GPS satellite positioning and China Telecom CDMA station network positioning. Able to reduce the error range to around 5 meters, GPSone technology is the best carrier for the online navigation and has a broad range of applications. "Love star" launched in 2004 is one special positioning service mainly used for the third-party positioning such as children and old people. Through the mobile communication network, it can show the position of the family members in the map so as to ensure their safety.
With the full start of 3G service of telecommunication industry in China, it is believed the positioning and navigation service will have a big growth in the present and future. Especially in the industry applications, the mobile solutions of GPSone technology have played a significant role. In the field of logistics, mobile phone positioning can arrange the loading of the goods reasonably and reduce the no-load rate; In terms of fire-fighting and public safety, mobile phone positioning is the essential tool for the head office to command and arrange. The mobile alarm and positioning service of GPSone technology is widely used in Guangdong and other provinces, and has become the potent weapon to ensure the public safety.
At present, the market potential of mobile navigation in our country is still far from effective development. Till this February, the number of mobile phone users in China has been approaching 660 million, but only a few of them use navigation mobile phones. Yan Honglin predicted, in 2010, we can see the explosive development of mobile navigation market in our country.