[Satellite Today – 5-9-08] More than 550 million GPS-enabled handsets will ship by 2012, according to a research report from ABI Research released May 9.
    In the wake of personal navigation devices’ success, cellular carriers have started to offer on-board and off-board navigation solutions as well as a range of location-based services such as friend finder and local search on GPS handsets, the report said.
    “While most CDMA handsets are already GPS-enabled and GPS is set to become a standard feature in GSM smartphones, GSM feature phones are next on the agenda to be equipped with GPS technology,“ Dominique Bonte, ABI principle analyst, said in a statement. “GPS chipset vendors increasingly target handsets, looking for new markets and spurred on by the recent dramatic growth of personal navigation devices.”