David Twiddy has some good analysis on the current state of GPS navigation functionality.

In Twiddy’s piece, smart-phones with GPS are providing a great threat to the marketplace created by TomTom, Garmin and others.  However, the stand alone devices are starting to push back with mobile data service links to wireless networks and a better price to value ratio than some of the smart-phones can provide.

The question then becomes…

Can smart-phones with products like Network In Motion’s Navigator or Goggle's new turn-by-turn offering win out or will the stand-alone offerings be the core to GPS and Location Based Services?

My current opinion on this is that monthly costs of on-deck offerings in the current economic environment will force many to the stand-alone offerings from TomTom and Garmin.  This will come from the fact that the navigators are less expensive and some of the smart-phone based offerings have usability issues ( ie my iphone usually burns too much battery along the way AND gives bad directions to get to the exact location… ).