Demand for Navigation Systems Will Reach 7.5 Million by 2015

The demand for global commercial navigation system shipments will grow from three million units in 2010 to 7.5 million in 2015, according to analyst firm ABI Research. While North America and Europe are currently the leading regions, the Asia-Pacific commercial navigation market is set for rapid growth as truck-specific map attributes become available.

"Enterprises are quickly discovering the many benefits offered by dedicated commercial navigation solutions: truck-specific routing (taking into account height, weight, length, width, and hazardous goods restrictions), optimized multi-stop routing, truck-specific points of interest such as weighing stations and rest stops, and time-on-duty and mileage reporting," says Dominique Bonte, director of ABI Research's Navigation and Telematics practice. "They allow fleets to reduce accidents, and improve driver safety and comfort while increasing customer satisfaction, resulting in short ROI periods."

Unsurprisingly, different form factors - dedicated embedded solutions, commercial grade portable navigation devices (PNDs) and converged solutions - are vying for success. Traditional fleet management vendors, such as Qualcomm and Navman Wireless, are increasingly integrating commercial navigation into their solutions based on software from vendors such as Maptuit or Mireo. However, the recent introduction of commercial grade PNDs by Garmin, Cobra and Rand McNally provides a cheaper alternative for smaller fleets. Navigon allows downloading aftermarket truck map attributes on consumer PNDs. Finally, vendors such as Telenav and ALK Technologies offer smartphone-based commercial navigation solutions.

Similar to developments in other technologies, there is a clear trend towards off-board cloud-based solutions leveraging the processing power of remote servers to calculate complex routing based on a large number of parameters, and static and dynamic restrictions.

Source: http://logisticstoday.com/