New GPS at CES 2007; Awards and Wrap-up

CES GPS Award Winners

With GPS systems going mainstream, this year's CES was destined to be bigger than last year's for shear number of announcements, and without a doubt it was. Let's take a look.

Connectedness
Dash navigation won awards for their Dash Express GPS with WiFi and Cellular onboard radios. Garmin has caught the fever too with its Garmin Nuvi 680 and Garmin StreetPilot 580 GPS units that come connected to the MSN Direct system via SPOT technology.

Big Splash

Consumer Giant LG announced their intention to enter the US market with a line of four GPS units, the LN 790, LN 740, LN 735, and LN 730.

TomTom announced some innovations that are pretty exciting too: The Eclipse AVN2210P in dash car stereo replacement with pop out slim navigation device. TomTom also announced the ability to sell this type of built in capability to OEM car manufacturers starting this summer.

Well known Audiovox introduced three new GPS units under the Jensen name. The NVX1000, NVX406, and the NVX227 should hit the market this Spring.

New Handhelds - Overlays are King
Bushnell formally announced their ONIX 400CR, an XM Weather capable held that can overlay weather radar data on top of the map. Not to be outdone, DeLorme announced a new handheld, the DeLorme PN-20 that can do map overlays of aerial images, satellite shots (in color) as well as some very good Topo maps. "Where's Garmin?" you ask. Plenty of time for them to respond before summer.

Thin is in

Mio pre-announced the Mio Digiwalker C520 and C250 GPS units that will hit the market later this year. Following their hit the Mio C310x, they are looking to move into a stronger position in the market with these thin and capable looking models. We'll get these in for review as soon as they are available.

The Porche designed P'9611 was introduced; thin and capable with pre-paid TMC traffic.

The Pocket LOOX N100 micro GPS was introduced to the US. This ultra portable GPS will compete with the Mio H610 unit.

Very thin, the Clifford Scout 420 is also a Sirius satellite radio conduit and all around media thingy resembling a Sony PSP. It will be interesting to watch this one to see how it does. Lots of capability, and it won an innovation award at CES 2007.

Advanced Routing
Pioneer AVIC-Z2 was announced. This in car stereo unit has a lot of media and GPS capabilities, including the ability to learn from you and what your favorite routes are. It will then take these roads into consideration when setting up navigation for you in the future.

Interesting Line Extensions

Cobra dropped a couple of interesting units on the market with their Cobra Navone 2100, an in-expensive GPS and their NavOne 5000, which was pre-announced at the show to have a huge 5 inch touchscreen.

Garmin brought out some new units that have both North American and European maps pre-loaded for the jet setters: Garmin Nuvi 370, Garmin Nuvi 670.

Garmin announced the Zumo 450 a lower cost motorcycle unit that is capable of a lot out on the road.

Big Shake-up?
While not at the CES 2007 show, the Apple iPhone was announced last week, and we have to wonder what the GPS capabilities will be like. Of course it will have emergency location capabilities, but it has Google Maps, and one has to think that the folks at Cupertino are thinking ahead and noticing the booming navigation market. The market is set to explode on mobile phone based navigation systems, as more people have capable phones and as more carriers push the service (for extra fees and revenue). I can't imagine that the Apple and Cingular folks would leave this hole as a competitive disadvantage versus so much of the market. Cingular is already working with TeleNav on mobile phone based navigation, so we'll see on this one.

January 14, 2007

New GPS at CES 2007; Awards and Wrap-up