November Sales and Share Shake-up in the GPS Market

Well, we're finally seeing some numbers come out on the GPS buying frenzy that happened over Black Friday and the following days. We recently reported that GPS sales on Black Friday were up 670% over year ago levels, reflecting what you probably already know if you're here at the GPS Lodge; GPS navigations systems are hot! Sales are hot and market shares are all over the place; I think we've got ourselves a horse race!

Sales figures and the Share shake-up after the jump....

Well, a recent AP article quotes NPD as saying that 93,000 GPS units were sold over Thanksgiving weekend, a seven fold increase over last year (670%), and they also indicated that even a week later the sales were still surging at a rate double a year ago.

Now in a few correspondence emails I exchanged with readers, we estimated 50,000 - 100,000 Mio C310x units alone. Maybe we were a little high, but we were pretty close (I didn't come to the estimate alone - a few of use got there together). We rationalized it like this: 5,000 outlets selling the Mio C310x (Staples, CompUSA and Circuit City), with anywhere between 5-20 units each on Black Friday plus inventory sold in the following days. Either way, Mio did well. And my hunch is that they accounted for a LOT of those 93,000 units.

A separate article reports shares of the GPS market were ALL OVER THE PLACE with the heavy discounting. But you saw this coming right?