MiTAC Launches PNDs for South East Asian Market

In light of growing demand for PND (portable navigation device) in the South East Asian market, MiTAC International Corp, a globally leading supplier of GPS (global positioning system) devices under own brands Mio and Navman, has launched automotive PNDs built with an electric map covering Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, according to company sources.

According to surveys by Canalys, total sales of PNDs in six countries of South East Asia, namely Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, amounted to 517,100 units in the first quarter of this year, sharply up nearly 30 percent from 400,000 units posted a year earlier and reaching 28 percent of 1.87 million units for entire last year.

Besides PND brands, like Mio and Garmin, electric map developers, including Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ, have also actively explored the Asian Pacific and Southeast Asian markets in recent years. According to Tele Atlas, electric maps of Asia are increasingly developed, able to provide accurate locations of more than 300 well-known landmarks in the area, including Taiwan`s Taipei 101 and Malaysia`s Petronas Tower skyscrapers and Singapore`s National Museum, based on 3-dimension images.

What`s more, electric maps of Aisa have been developed to cover areas in 11 countries, including 4.5 million kilometers of road and 430 POIs (points of interest), noted Tele Atlas. The company added that increasingly strong consumer demand for up-to-date information of road conditions and related services will definitely prompt GPS makers to build functions of browsing the Internet in their products, as 86 percent of GPS users in China and 80 percent in Thailand strongly wish their GPS devices could provide them real-time data and update services in the future.

Working with Tele Delta, MiTAC is the only GPS supplier launching automotive PNDs, namely C320b and C230 series, with built-in electric maps covering the four aforementioned countries of South East Asia. The firm tailors the two new PNDs for business people and provides electric map update services every six months.

Source: CENS