Apple, along with other smart phone manufacturers, continues to pioneer position technology, and is far ahead of the conventional satnav manufacturers, such as Garmin and Satmap.
The iPhone 4s has actually has a chipset that receives both GPS & GLONESS satellite signals, plus it augments it location from other data sources (I made another posting about this somewhere on this site –v will search for it), whereas currently only the new eTrex series from Garmin has the dual GNSS constellation capability, and none of the other products used other location based services, such as A-GPS, unlike the smartphones.
Using smartphones to navigate in the countryside has come to the fore again with Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team, amongst others, having to rescue people who had relied only on smartphones to navigate with. Four on the weekend of 11/12 of August alone - which culminated in a group of 14 hill walkers being walked down from the summit of Ben Macdui – Britain’s second highest mountain!
Garmin tried to embrace platform diversity with the 3G GPS Garmiphone, an Android smartphone and Garmin GPS navigation device, yet, as large a corporation as they are they cannot compete with industry giants, such as Apple.
I personally believe that the next paradigm shift in location based technology will come not from the conventional satnav manufacturers but instead, from the manufacturers of smartphones.