Smart phones drive GPS chips shipment

"With GPS well on the way to becoming a ubiquitous feature across the mobile consumer space, GPS chipsets are subject to increasingly challenging requirements," says Dominique Bonte, practice director, ABI Research. "Many new LBS services such as social networking, tracking, logging, and geo-tagging require always-on, instant operation even in the absence of network assistance and without sacrificing battery life or increasing cost. This has prompted both u-blox and CSR to design their new u-blox 6 and SiRFStar IV/SiRFaware architectures, optimised for battery-powered portable devices."

Other important trends include the adoption of post-processing for geo-tagging and tracking applications as implemented by u-blox in its "Capture & Process" technology, support for new GNSS systems such as Glonass and Galileo, jammer remover functionality, sensor support, SoC implementations such as STMicroelectronics' Cartesio+ application processor and Broadcom's BCM4760 "PND-on-a-chip", and software-based GPS Fastrax.

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