An iPhone Request: GPS, Please

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Since Apple is mum on the subject, we can only speculate.

Needed for the Whole Package

My money's on GPS being included in version 2. But even if it's not, there's a strong case for including it in the third version, likely to be released sometime in 2009. Adding GPS would give the iPhone an indisputable grand-slam lineup of features: navigation along with best-in-class music and video, Web browsing, and voice and data communications. Imagine how tightly the Web browser, address book, and other features could be integrated. Google searches on the Web could tell you not only the address of the place you seek, but also tell you how far you are from it. Your address book could do the same thing.

Imagine how social networking could be enhanced by the knowledge that your closest friends are nearby, assuming they've opted to let you see where they are? You and your very best friend might set your iPhones to make a special sound when you're within, say, an eighth of a mile of each other. (A service called Loopt already does this on other handsets.) Imagine the third-party applications that could harness GPS: games that involve moving around—say, a virtual Capture the Flag or a virtual obstacle course; business applications that tell the central office where employees are in relation to where they're supposed to be.

Established companies in the GPS business already see the phone as the natural place to be, and from the looks of their product plans they already expect the iPhone to enter the market. Garmin (GRMN) will later this year launch a device called the Nuvifone that looks a lot like an iPhone and will double as a personal navigation device, or PND.

And if the rumors about the iPhone's expected lower price (BusinessWeek.com, 5/1/08) are borne out, the iPhone will become even more compelling as an all-in-one device. The average selling price of a navigation device is about $280, down from more than $400 as recently as three years ago. Why bother with the PND for your car when your phone is already a perfectly good PND with a bright and gorgeous touch-sensitive screen to boot?

Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.