Is the PND dead?

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 09 Jan 2008

Reports of the death of the personal navigation device (PND) at the hand of convergence is much exaggerated, say vendors.

"Mobile phones will never have the features like we have on the PND, such as text to speech, voice recognition, etcetera," says Core Group TomTom product manager Francois Elzenga.

The question arises from the increasing number of smartphones entering the market with embedded global positioning systems (GPS) and navigation software. MapIT communications manager Lorraine Deane adds "convergence does not always turn out to be as good as expected".

"It has long been predicted that smartphones will be the next big wave of navigation and with the recent sale of Navteq to Nokia, it would be naive to think that smartphones won't have a significant impact on the PND market," she says. "However, there are still several limitations associated with convergence of phones and navigation which still need to be overcome."

Elzenga says one of these is the small size of smartphone screens. "So, it is hard to follow the directions by screen without a voice. Another thing is, as soon as you receive a call, the GPS will not 'work', or give directions. And I know from my own experience that people always call at the moment you are in need of route information, or at critical points and crossings."

The TomTom distributor adds that hardware and software still remain a problem, with too many programming upgrades required and "that for every new cellphone you need a new SD card. Otherwise it is not compatible."

Elzenga notes that most cellphones work with a separate receiver "which you have to connect with your cellphone via Bluetooth", something he considers a disadvantage.

Deane says SA is about "three years behind the European market. As such, we can expect the impact of mobile phones on the sales of standalone units to take some time.

"PNDs still have the advantage of being dedicated to navigation, they have big, easy to use touch-screen operation and come ready to use with all accessories such as car chargers and cradles," Deane adds.

"We definitely feel the PND will always have a place in the market and specialist PND companies such as TomTom should not be discounted when considering where navigation is going in the future."