Industrial players of GNSS - Navigation system industry
From INVESaTWIKI
Industrial players of GNSS - Navigation system industry
The European navigation system (hardware) industry shows a different picture in the various market segments. In the automotive segment,
for example, namely car navigation systems and road tolling, Europe has a leading role in the world market (e.g. Siemens VDO,
Grundig, Fela, Magneti Marelli, Bosch-Blaupunkt, Becker). The same applies to the high end surveying market, where Leica and Thales
play a major role. The aviation market is dominated by US companies, but Thales is at least one major European player with a leading role
there.
In the two markets where the biggest growth potential is forecasted – mobile communication and fleet management – there has been no
major European industrial development although some of the world’s leading mobile phone companies are European.
For road vehicle fleet management systems, it might happen that the market evolves mid-term. The on-going penetration of such systems,
due to the introduction of advanced road tolling systems, could help to develop the market. In other logistics areas, particularly the intermodal
logistics sector (container tracking, etc.), the market is extremely fragmented. It would certainly help if there was more co-operation between
the various companies – for standardisation and marketing reasons.<br/
In the mobile phone sector, it seems that the big European players have not yet recognised navigation as a potential asset. Currently, industry
is going other ways there, like picture, video or audio integration, in order to attract customers, and to generate as much traffic as possible
in their networks. The only nameable European player on the mobile phone market is Benefon, a Finnish company, that developed
smart integrated communication/navigation devices, but has not been very successful with their products.
The handheld navigation market has started to develop from another side – the PDAs. Today, a number of “extension kits” for PDAs are
sold, consisting of external GPS antennae and software packages, mostly for car navigation. Garmin (US), a world-wide leading manufacturer
of GPS handhelds, has done the next step, which is the direct integration of a GPS chip into a PDA with Palm software (the iQue3600).
Other big mobile phone companies (e.g. T-Mobile) have started to integrate communication into PDAs. If this integration of technologies will
be continuing (what is very likely), one can expect that in few years, mobile phones will have PDA-like functions (or vice versa), together
with a satellite navigation interface. The task of European co-operations could be to try to accelerate the integration process by establishing
a fruitful dialogue between successful satellite navigation product companies like Garmin and big mobile phone players. Another reason for
the reluctance of the last-mentioned might be, that they have invested some money on their own into location technologies, based on terrestrial
cell navigation methods. Moreover, they have some negative experiences with space products which might continue to have an effect
on their decisions. In the GALILEO programme, it should be avoided to leave the impression that they have to invest into the infrastructure
before they can benefit from the use of GALILEO. [1]
References
[1] G.Dippel-Hens (GALILEAN working group report)
"GNSS business issues".
