“Torture numbers and they’ll confess to  anything”. So said Greg Easterbrook, and who are we to disagree. Generally we take the vast amount of market statistics relating to the GPS market with a heavy pinch of salt …

… well that is apart from when it’s good news for CoPilot, in which case we’ll talk them up without any hesitation at all.

Last week saw Canalys publish their Q3 mobile navigation market estimates for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), and quite frankly we are delighted that CoPilot Live has maintained it’s Smartphone navigation market share in the face of fierce competition.

Of course we are choosing to ignore sales of PND’s in our reporting of the statistics, but as a smartphone navigation company, the ones that relate directly to us are, well, the smartphone navigation statistics.

And they make for some good reading:

CoPilot Live is #1 for perpetual License smartphone navigation .

The term ‘perpetual license’ means unlimited-use turn-by-turn satellite navigation software purchased for a one-off fee (often for CoPilot purchased with a phone).

This is as opposed to subscription navigation which is usually paid on a monthly or per-use basis.

CoPilot Live is the number 1 for perpetual license smartphone navigation in EMEA.

Source: Canalys estimates, Mobile Navigation Analysis, November 2008, © canalys.com ltd.

CoPilot Live is #2 overall in smartphone navigation (perpetual and subscription)

Ok so if you count Nokia with their pre-loaded per-use subscription service, then we slip back to #2, but how many of those users are paying every month we wonder?

Whatever your opinion about market stats, we have decided to be proud about these ones, and we will be working hard to maintain our position into 2009 as the smartphone navigation markets continues to grow at a huge pace – If the forecasts are to be believed!

[ratings]