Author—Sal Dhanani – Co-Founder and Sr. Director of Marketing

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I’ve been monitoring some of the GPS news coming from CES this week and it seems like at least one major theme popping up this year is connectivity.

Traditionally standalone GPS devices have not provided a “real-time” connection with the Internet. The mapping and business information must manually be updated by the customer on a quarterly or annual basis.

However, now some of the newer devices have this connection capability and are on display in Vegas at the show. The benefits of connectivity include real-time access to information like traffic, local business listings, etc.

There is a catch though. These connected devices (the hardware itself) will likely cost you much, much more than the non-connected devices and there will be a monthly subscription fee added on top of the cost of the hardware.

What surprises me is that many people still do not realize that their cell phones have provided GPS navigation services and this inherent Internet connectivity for several years now. Rather than purchase an extremely expensive GPS device (for anywhere from $400 – $2,000), they can get the same GPS navigation capabilities on their cell phones.

So, at the end of the day, they can get the same service for ONLY a monthly subscription and they can get it on a device they already own and carry with them everywhere – with the same amount of real-time information.

Our goal in this industry has been from the beginning to bring very high-quality GPS navigation services to everyone at a great value.

Hopefully customers will do some competitive shopping before purchasing expensive connected GPS devices. Try our service for 30 days for free and I think you’ll see that what is being touted as “new” at CES, is already available to you at a much more affordable price.