If you're a GPS device manufacturer, you have two options: develop a general purpose GPS device for use in cars or on foot, or develop a niche GPS device for use in a very specific situation. The big players like Garmin and Tom Tom have the general purpose GPS device market sewn up, as that's where the money is, leaving smaller players to focus on the niches.

One of those smaller players is a company called SatSki, who, as their name suggests, have found a very novel niche indeed - Sat-Nav for skiers.

Nokia aren't the only mobile phone company muscling in on the GPS market. Samsung are also barging their way in with the announcement of the new Samsung i550 GPS phone. The i550 is Samsung's first GPS phone, and shows the South Korean company going shoulder to shoulder with Nokia into this brand new territory for mobile devices.

More details of the Samsung i550 GPS phone after the jump.

Nokia have announced the Nokia 810 Internet Tablet. Building on its previous Internet Tablets, the new 810 offers a number of extra features that makes this one start to make sense. For a start, it's got a keyboard, where the old Nokia 800 only had stylus input. More importantly, Nokia have also equipped it with GPS and full mapping software.

Mio have launched the Mio C728, a new GPS device that could actually lead to more accidents than its Sat-Nav abilities would prevent. The C728's crowning feature is a giant 7" display. Great for seeing the route you're on, but not so great for actually seeing past it to the real road ahead!

I mean, 7" - great for bragging rights, but where are you going to put it?

The Mio C728 comes with an audio and video player, Bluetooth and 3.5mm headphone connector, but the size of its screen means it'll drain its battery in less than 2.5 hours.

[Source: GPSMagazine]

Microsoft has extended its current contract with mapping data specialist Navteq in a deal that provides the company with two sources of traffic and routing data: Inrix and Navteq. According to Navteq, they are the preferred provider of traffic information, with Inrix adding redundancy to Microsoft's mapping services, ensuring seamless mapping data for all of Microsoft's location-based services.

Acer have announced the Acer Ferrari Racing GPS Device, a handheld GPS device that also doubles as a PDA as well as a wannabe smartphone. As well as a SiRF Star III GPS receiver and ALK CoPilot navigation software, the new Acer Ferarri GPS unit also comes with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a 2.8" touchscreen and even a Windows Mobile Office suite, enabling you to use it as a true PDA.

More details after the jump.

Spanish GPS device manufacturer Blusens have released the Blusens G01, a GPS device that differentiates itself from its competitors with what it calls 3D pictometry navigation.

Rather than displaying your route as a series of abstract lines overlaid on top of a green background like other GPS devices, the new Bluesens G01 provides real world satellite imagery of your immediate surroundings and overlays the route on top of images of the actual road you're driving along.

Better still, the route twists and turns as you do and the imagery even zooms in and out depending on how complex the route gets (zooming in when approaching a complex junction, for example, and then zooming out when the route straightens up again).

More details of the Blusens G01 after the jump.

Microsoft is rumoured to be about to buy GPS device manufacturer Garmin, showing how important location-based services have become.

As GPS navigation has moved away from its traditional domain of air, marine and car-based Sat-Nav to a more personal domain of Personal Navigation Devices and now GPS phones, a whole new class of location-aware devices and location-based services is about to emerge, with Microsoft, Google and Nokia poised to lead the field.

However, as the following article argues, Google has much more to gain and potentially more to lose in the race to become the world's primary navigator. If Microsoft buys Garmin, it will be Google who suffers.

A new study into teenagers' mobile phone preferences and behaviour conducted by Online Testing eXchange (OTX) has shown that the majority of 13-17 year olds are uninterested in GPS phones. When asked what features they would want in a mobile phone, GPS came out just second from bottom, with only 16% thinking it would be a good idea.

Nokia, you might think, might be slightly startled by these findings, given the billions they're spending in order to enter the GPS marketplace in a big way. But they don't need to lose any sleep just yet.

Read on after the jump.

After Nokia's purchase of mapping company Navteq, there's a new rumour from Investor's Business Daily that GPS device manufacturer Garmin are looking to fight back with their own GPS phone. Garmin have traditionally used Navteq's maps in its devices, but with Nokia's increasing push into the GPS market, the Finnish mobile phone company is increasingly being seen as a competitor to Garmin.

Nokia's purchase of Navteq therefore effectively puts the mapping data that Garmin relies upon inot the hands of a new rival.

But can Garmin really take on Nokia at its own game?...