A Perfect Storm

Price Reductions

GPS technology’s advancements have been coupled with continual price reductions from the chipset layer on up to the software layer, so that GPS is also easier to bundle and sell than ever before. GPS chips have come down from about $50 in 1995 to less than $10 today, and the cost for a manufacturer to add a GPS chip to, say, a cell phone is substantially less. These drops have ushered in GPS devices for as low as $139, which any consumer marketer will attest is squarely in the consumer electronics “sweet spot”. For an analysis of GPS price trends, visit ABI Research at www.abiresearch.com.