Navigation in Cell Phones

After hitting alarm clock makers and camera manufacturers, the cell phone industry has a new target--personal-navigation device makers.

Handset makers see navigation as one of the next major value-adding offerings and even at this very early stage, analysts say the annual market for phone navigation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The world's top handset maker, Nokia, started to sell its first navigation phone, the N95, a month ago, and other top vendors are expected to follow shortly, hoping to make 2007 the breakthrough year for cell phone navigation.

The N95, with a $950 price tag, is not within reach of the masses despite early reports of strong sales, but the Finnish firm aims to bring GPS-positioning chips to a wide array of its products.

The GPS technology enables handset makers to bypass mobile phone network operators and at least some of the navigation phones can be used for routing when not connected to operators' networks.

Operators would get a share of the business when real-time data traffic starts to grow. The handset makers hope that people will use phones to find restaurants nearby, although car-navigation firms have already started to offer road data.