Industry Trends

Convergence
GPS capability is becoming ubiquitous in a wide variety of electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and many others. As GPS chipsets and subsystems become smaller, faster and less expensive, GPS technology will be integrated with RFID, intertial and other technologies to bring location information to even more applications.

Automation
Another trend is the use of GPS and other positioning technologies to automate systems such as heavy machinery in construction, mining and agriculture. Benefits include increased safety for workers as well as increased productivity due to improved uptime and accuracy.

Mobile Resource Management
More and more workers and assets are on the move. The combination of wireless handheld computing systems with GPS based vehicle tracking is an emerging trend in the mobile workplace. Mobile resource management is revolutionizing the transportation industry by improving delivery times, vehicle utilization and worker safety and productivity.

Emerging Markets
Developing markets such as China, India and Eastern Europe are creating significant demand for positioning technology. As these countries invest in infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges and telecommunications infrastructure, they are demanding high accuracy positioning information. These emerging markets provide a huge opportunity for the use of location-based technologies.

Software
High accuracy positioning systems require not just sophisticated hardware but also integrated software, and seamless support and service in order to deliver a complete positioning solution. Software is playing an increasingly important role in providing consistently accurate positioning information, as well the ability to integrate positioning information with other data to provide meaningful business intelligence.