The challenge to the Portable Sat Nav Device - ‘PND’- from mobile applications has been  predicted since the arrival of the first GPS-enabled smartphones. Analysts such as ABI Research agree, recently forecasting that “software will take half of the total navigation market by 2016”*.

 Now, according to survey research conducted with 5000 CoPilot Live customers on the future of Sat Nav, this challenge to PND dominance would now seem to be very real.  82% of respondents said they would be unlikely to purchase a dedicated sat nav device in the future.

 CoPilot Live customers seem to appreciate that today’s touch screen handsets such as the iPhone and Google’s Android-powered devices are capable of providing the same detailed mapping and voice-guided directions at the fraction of the price of a PND.  And it’s up to the task of daily navigation, with the survey also revealing that 65% of respondents use CoPilot Live at least once a week.

  “This survey is concrete evidence that smartphone navigation is a direct threat to dedicated devices” commented David Quin, marketing director, CoPilot Live navigation at ALK Technologies. “Full-featured apps like CoPilot Live now provide the same advanced guidance features and detailed maps of a high-end sat nav on a wide range of handsets, and that for the majority, there’s no going back.”

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 *Source: ABI Research, Software will take half of the Total Navigation Market by 2016 – www.abiresearch.com