PARIS (Reuters) - Satellite navigation will be rapidly adopted by mobile phone makers in coming years as chipsets become cheaper and less power-hungry, the chief executive of UK-based chip maker CSR (CSR.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Monday.
"I think GPS will climb really steeply because it's actually a bargain," John Scarisbrick said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris.
"We can deliver GPS for well less than $1 incremental over a Bluetooth chip."
GPS (global positioning system) chips are currently mostly a feature of high-end phones, and Scarisbrick said the adoption had been held back by a design derived from portable navigation systems for cars, where power consumption was not an issue.
"The technology is there now. Before it's in the hands of consumers it will be 2008, and it will be significant in 2009," he said.
Scarisbrick said he estimated adoption would rise quickly.
About 40 to 50 percent of mobile phones made this year will have built in Bluetooth -- a wireless technology for connecting phones to headsets and other devices, said Scarisbrick, whose company is a Bluetooth specialist.
"You could see it (GPS) getting half the Bluetooth attach rate in 2009," he said.
The chief executive of car navigation device maker TomTom (TOM2.AS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Harold Goddijn, told Reuters last month that it was actively looking at the handset business.
Goddijn said mobile phones would not replace dedicated car navigation devices because the user experience was different, but added GPS-enabled phones could be useful when combined with real-time traffic information or for pedestrians.
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