New Opportunities in Cycling, Eyewear, Golf, and Personal Tracking will Spur the GPS Device Market Through 2019

As PND shipments continue to fall, device OEMs are continually looking for new areas of growth. ABI Research believes that new opportunities in cycling, eyewear, golf and personal tracking will help the overall market to continue to grow.

Senior analyst Patrick Connolly comments, “GPS Fitness watches are not expected to suffer significant revenue declines over the forecast period despite the presence of smartwatches and smart eyewear. 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.”

The total market for dedicated GPS devices in 2013 was estimated at 35 million units, which is expected to grow almost 30% over the forecast period, despite accelerated declining Western PND markets. 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.

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.”

These findings are part of ABI Research’s Location Devices Market Research.

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advises thousands of decision makers through 70+ research and advisory services. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.