GPS Tracking Devices Estimated to Hit $3.5 Billion in 2019

As reported by PCB007: Health, commercial/enterprise, wearables, and iBeacons will help to revive the GPS tracking device market, with ABI Research forecasting the market to reach over $3.5 billion in 2019.

The GPS personal tracking market has always had huge potential yet it has faced huge barriers around awareness and ROI, expensive devices, cellular subscriptions, indoor location and severe regionalization and fragmentation. As a result the market has never been able to scale sufficiently to lower costs and create the revenue to support much needed marketing/advertising campaigns.

In its latest report, “Personal Location Device and Application Markets,” ABI Research considers adoption of GPS devices and smartphone applications across family, elderly/health, lone worker, pets, and personal assets. Senior analyst Patrick Connolly commented, “The potential of this market continues to draw investment and interest. Over the last 12 months, there has been a host of companies entering this space. As well as a steady stream of start-ups like estimate and hereO, buoyed by wearables and iBeacons, enterprise/commercial GPS companies are moving into areas such as mobile workforce management and lone worker applications, while the connected home market will evolve to support personal protection across children, pets, cars, etc.; e.g. 

Carriers eager to solve the problem of saturated markets have begun to reconsider this space with the dawn of GPS-enabled wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT).”

This is reflected in a significant increase in GPS IC shipments into this space over the past year, as low-cost GPS units become adopted worldwide for a host of applications. 

iBeacons are set to be a major driver, solving the issue of indoor location, while also creating a low-cost entry point for both OEMs and consumers. With BLE beacons forecast to penetrate into all aspects of life over the next 3 years, consumer awareness and acceptance will quickly emerge.

Other advances in technology, such as eLoran, commercial drone systems, autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles using LIDAR, M2M communications for GPS based IoT, and tracking devices using multiple GPS/GNSS systems and tracking silicon with accelerometers and inertial navigation - and augmented with with jamming and spoofing detection are likely to keep the GPS tracking industry moving forward at a rapid pace.