DigitalGlobe announces agreement with Nokia for use of imagery

DigitalGlobe and Nokia have agreed to bring high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery to Nokia Maps, both on mobile devices and on Ovi, improving the global driving, hiking and walking navigation capabilities for consumers who use these applications. www.digitalglobe.coma

NASA to use RFID for spacecraft part tracking
Intermec, USA has announced a cooperative research effort with NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center to investigate new automatic identi?cation tracking (AIT) technologies, to qualify machine-readable symbol markings and RFID devices for use on spaceborne vehicles. Intermec will evaluate markings that have been exposed to low earth orbit environments during the third and fourth Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) missions, and will also prepare additional marked samples and soft and rigid RFID tags to be included in MISSE 6, scheduled for July 2007. www.usingr?d.com

MetaCarta’s LBS for 2012 Olympics
MetaCarta, Inc., and the British Transport Police (BTP) shall provide location based situational awareness for the 2012 Olympics. BTP will use MetaCarta geographic search and referencing solutions to geo-enable and consolidate information from multiple data sources by geographic location and display it in MapView, BTP’s intranet map-based visualisation tool. www.metacarta.com

First indoors GPS application for Nokia Phones
Tagggit has launched their mobile application for Nokia S60 phones with an accurate Indoors GPS. It can fi nd a phone’s position indoors, within a few seconds and accurate to 15 feet. www.tagggit.com

Canalys: EMEA Q3 GPSs phone shipments overtake PNDs
According to Canalys, shipments of PNDs in the Q3 to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa fell to 4.3 million from 4.8 million in Q2, while shipments of GPS-enabled smartphones soared, rising from 4.7 million to 10.4 million. Based on its latest research, the firm estimates that global shipments of PNDs in Q3 2008 rose 14% compared to Q3 2007, with North America and Asia Pacific still seeing considerable volume growth of 49% and 25% respectively. The risk to PND vendors is likely to rise further as the economic situation forces more consumers to take a hard look at their discretionary purchases/ www.canalys.com

Motorola launches GPS-based touchscreen phone
Motorola has launched its touchscreen GPS-enabled phone offering navigation maps and landmarks of 30 cities in India.
http://economictimes.indiaticommes.

US businesses expected to spend 11 billion dollars on mobile apps by 2012
According to CompassIntelligence.com, businesses in the U.S. will spend roughly $11.6 billion on mobile applications by 2012. This year U.S. businesses are expected to spend an estimated $4.9 billion on mobile applications. This market is poised for double-digit17 growth over the next 5 years, driven by the growth in remote and telecommuting employees, the movement in “open Mobile Devices,” and the explosion of new and emerging free and fee-based mobile applications available for download. This research is part of Compass Intelligence’s Applications and Business Wireless
research. http://www.gpsdaily.com

US PND market doubles in Q2
Shipments of portable navigation devices (PNDs) in the United States almost doubled in the second quarter (Q2) of this year at 3.7 million units, compared to the 2.8 million units in Q2 2007, but
prices are still dropping, according to market research firm Canalys. At this time last year, unit volume shipments were depressed following an inventory buildup resulting from extremely high sales into the channel in the final quarter. While shipments have grown,
Canalys estimates that average selling prices have dropped approximately 40 percent drop year over year.
Canalys estimates that Garmin remained the US market leader with 47% share, up 4% on its Q1 position, but down slightly on the 50% it had a year ago. TomTom, in second, saw year-on-year growth substantially above the market average, almost trebling its shipments, and giving it a share of 25%. Despite this high growth, this was down on the 28% it had in Q1, meaning that Garmin increased its lead by several percentage points sequentially. Magellan retained its third place with a reduced 11% share. These three vendors have consistently taken more than 80% of the market for several quarters. Outside of the top three, several vendors posted high year-onyear
growth, notably Mio Technology, Navigon and Nextar, albeit on much lower volumes. www.canalys.com

SLA and MapKing launch free mobile StreetMap

Singapore Land Authority and MapKing (Singapore) Pte Ltd have jointly launched StreetMap@Singapore. It can be viewed on PDAs, PDA phones, and smart phones. Named as `SLA StreetMap Mobile’ it can be downloaded for free onto any mobile device running on Windows Mobile Operating System.

SLA StreetMap Mobile has similar functions with its online StreetMap@ Singapore at www.map.gov.sg. Anyone with a compatible mobile device can search for location maps using address, road name, postal code, building or development name on the move. Containing about 2,000 buildings, 4,200 named roads, and some 120,000 updated address points, it is driven by the MapKing engine. www.sla.gov.sg

GeoSpatial Experts have introduced an integrated magnetic compass/GPS receiver module for the Ricoh 500SE digital camera It had a sole built-in GPS receiver, which enabled the camera to acquire the location coordinates of each photo and embed them with the photo as an attribute without an external GPS device.