Bye Bye GPS?
GPS World had an article yesterday that says that it expects that within five years 25% of all positioning technology will be of the hybrid variety… ie GPS plus something else like Cell ID, Wi Fi, RFID, etc with the major goal of providing indoor coverage and also better time to first fix. Particular props go to SkyHook and its ability to do deals with major GPS chip manufacturers such as Broadcom, SiRF, Qualcomm etc. Although, why the “traditional” GPS players haven’t moved much more aggressively here is still a bit of a mystery.
On one hand, this is promising news in that it says things are moving in the right direction for making location awareness more widely available, which will no doubt create more and more useful location oriented services. Solutions that just work when you’re outside in clear view of the sky is kind of like an MP3 player that only works when you stand still… if you look at it from the consumers perspective it’s an absolutely silly limitation to have to deal with. But then again the consumer location awareness market is currently nearly synonymous with navigation which is of course generally conducted in the outdoors, so maybe that narrow view of the location awareness world explains why we are in the position we’re in.
I hope that in a few years we’ll look back on the years of the $500 outdoor GPS only navigation devices in the same way we now look back at 3 1/2 inch floppy disk… 27 satellites out in space?! Cost what?! Took how long to get working?! Only worked outside?! Only you could know where you were?! They only used it for driving directions?! Had to keep it plugged in or the battery would die?!
How funny!
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