GPS killer app for phones introduced

The outfit, which has been flogging its CoPilot Live application for PDAs and smartphones, thinks that it is time to move to mobile phones.

In an interview with Tech Digest, ALK's managing director Michael Kornhauser said GPS software has depended on separate receivers that connect to phones using Bluetooth.

However, the technology to allow true GPS-enabled phones and HSDPA networks point to a bright future for mobile satellite navigation, he said.

ALK, which helped the US government computing routes from Earth to Mars, thinks that with devices like the Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson W950 there is enough hardware to make GPS work, both technologically and commercially.

The key part of making it worth will be the back-up network which means that punters do not have to have huge databases stored inside the phone. A punter moving from one part of the country to another simply downloads the details of the area from the nearest base station.

Kornhauser ssaid that operators are likely to charge customers a set fee per month for, say, traffic information which can be overlaid onto a phone's mapping software.

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