Mobile GPS soon to hit Europe
In the first nine months of 2006, nearly 12 million Global Positioning System (GPS) devices were sold across the world; it’s expected to double to nearly 28 million in 2007 as more people want to know exactly where they are at any given time. Most GPS systems are used by motorists navigating around the roads, sailors determining their position on the ocean and ramblers taking extreme walks up hillsides. But this is all set to change according to the mobile industry. This year, they expect that GPS will finally go side by side with mobile phones across Europe.
Unlike the US and Japan, which use a mobile standard known as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), Europe's networks run on a totally different system called GSM (Global System for Mobile communication). But with new developments in chip designs, and the increased processing power of mobile phones, it means that GPS can now more easily be incorporated into a mobile phone handset. Also, a new technology called assisted GPS (AGPS) gets rid of frustrating lag times which come with normal GPS devices as they attempt to lock on to satellites. It takes advantage of the cellular network to speed up the process of finding a location.
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