Personal Navigation Devices

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Gregory T Wilson Personal Navigation Devices TM583 11/29/2011 It is not too hard to understand the growing popularity of personal navigation devices. Navigational assistants have always been a priority throughout history. It is a history dating as early as 5500 years ago when Mesopotamian merchants were building vessels large enough to ship goods on a commercial scale [ (Spera & Strom, 2002) ]. Hieroglyphs dating back to 3200 BC pictures recordings of Egyptian sea voyages. From celestial navigation, landmarks, lighthouses, compasses, to modern GPS devices, history has proven to have a strong affinity for navigation [ (Spera & Strom, 2002) ]. Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) now make up one of the largest markets for GPS enabled devices [ (MCDM Project, 2011) ]. The PND or Personal Navigation Device typically provides geo-location, maps, and turn-by-turn directions. According to a 2009 analysis from Berg Insight there were more than 150 million PNDs in circulation. With the enormous infusion of PND technology into smart phones, this number has most likely increased significantly [ (Berg Insight, 2009) ]. In fact, PND technology has been finding its way into nearly everything to handles one form of navigation or another from integrate automotive PND technology, PND technology in boats, PND additions for bicycles, and even PND technology for trekking just to name a few [ (Berg Insight, 2009) ]. The market of PNDs was at one time synonymous with Garmin and TomTom. However, these two companies along with the other market brands such as Magellan only now handle about 10-15% of the PND technology products. The new trend is the incorporation of PND technology in smart phones. Nearly every smart phone on the market has PND technology, most of it now free or beyond reasonable in cost [ (Berg Insight, 2009) ]. There is still, however, the stigma that
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