Category Archives: GPS
GPS Map Made With One Really, Really Long Walk [GPS]
Darth Vader Drives You Through the Dark Side of the Road [GPS]
Mio stuns at CeBIT with ultra-sleek Moov V780 MID
Mio stuns at CeBIT with ultra-sleek Moov V780 MID originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink
Best Tablet Review | 
Mio | Email this | Comments
Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope
As everyone knows, Garmin and TomTom have their backs against the ropes in a fight to remain relevant in an age of free GPS turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones (thanks Google and Nokia). While dedicated personal navigators are almost always superior to their converged competition, the gap has certainly narrowed such that it's become difficult to justify another device when an increasing number of people already carry a fine navigation device in their pockets. But that's just gut instinct talking, where's the hard evidence? Certainly not speculative stock prices. A good place to start is in forward-looking financial statements like the one Garmin, the leading navigation device maker in the US, just issued. Gamin says that it expects competition to cause prices to decline by about 10% in the personal navigation device (PND) industry putting pressure on margins, and thus profits, in 2010. It also sees flat or slightly declining revenue over the same period. Fortunately for Garmin, it has a diversified product offering that includes the Nuvifone. However, Garmin admits to being disappointed by sales of the handset that "won" our Editor's Choice award for Worst Gadget of the Year. Things aren't all doom and gloom, though. Garmin has a pair of Nuvifones in the chute including the Android-powered A50. And its Q4 results of $1.43 per share easily beat analyst expectations of 95 cents a share. Even TomTom surprised many last week with a 1% increase in Q4 revenue and net profit of €75 million compared to a €989 million loss a year ago. So there's some hope left for the dedicated PND market... but not much.
Filed under: Cellphones, GPS
Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |FT (TomTom), Reuters (Garmin) | Email this | Comments
Solar flares set to wreak havoc on GPS signals
[Thanks, Mike]
Solar flares set to wreak havoc on GPS signals originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |BBC News | Email this | Comments
TI stuffs WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and FM radios on a single chip, UWB and LTE are like ‘hello?’
TI stuffs WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and FM radios on a single chip, UWB and LTE are like 'hello?' originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |PR Newswire | Email this | Comments
Suck It, Street View, Navteq Maps the World in 3D… With Lasers [GPS]
Google's Street View team famously photographs all kinds of weird stuff as they drive the world, but Navteq, who basically invented this stuff, just built a mount with seven cameras and 64 lasers to see everything better, in 3D.
Mounted atop a VW Jetta wagon is this crazy apparatus with a 12-megapixel panoramic camera on top and six more cameras pointed in specific directions to pick up signs and other data points. But the best gadgetry—the laser array—is housed inside a rapidly spinning barrel positioned at an angle. By using LIDAR, basically radar but with lasers, they scan everything within view, capturing 1.2 million points of data every second. The result is all kinds of terrain data that is not possible using just cameras.
The goal is "high accuracy maps," a deliberately vague notion that ranges from additional information—bridge underpass clearance heights, multilayer cloverleaf navigation and other obvious issues—to super rich 3D environments like the ones you see below. Those aren't CG renderings, in the traditional sense, it's laser-enriched photography.
Navteq, a Chicago company owned by Nokia who has been driving around making maps since the first GPS satellites were hurled into orbit, still provides a massive share of map data for web and devices, so the fruits of this tech might get to you sooner than you know.
As for your own personal rig, I sure want one, and my guess is that Google wants one too—if they don't have it already. [Navteq]
Audi teams up with NVIDIA for next-gen MMI replete with Google Earth, Vibrante entertainment system
Audi teams up with NVIDIA for next-gen MMI replete with Google Earth, Vibrante entertainment system originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments2011 Audi A8 packs optional EDGE, Google Earth
Update: As some commenters have helpfully noted, it seems that while the A8 won't initially roll out with 3G, it will be getting a UMTS modem in mid 2010, which should provide the bandwidth necessary for Google Earth and allow for simultaneous voice and data connections.
2011 Audi A8 packs optional EDGE, Google Earth originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |Autoblog | Email this | Comments
Philips GoGear Connect is a legitimate Android-based iPod touch competitor (updated)