Yesterday, I learned that NavigationForum 2006 will be held in Shanghai on Nov. 16~17. Organizing Committee of Olympics Beijing and Shanghai EXPO Bureau will both attend the forum to discuss together about the functions of navigation equipments in urban transportation and how to solve the difficult traffic problem.
As I heard from Autonavi Software Co., Ltd., who undertakes the forum, "the navigation industry" is becoming a new industry with increasingly close relationship with urban residents and urban traffic administration. The navigation industry can be applied, besides urban ITS field, in automobile, IT, communications, and a lot of other fields.
Effective navigation requires advanced digital maps as a guarantee. Different from normal digital maps, generally, all the available digital navigation maps can provide a full range of various traffic and road information of hundreds of large and small cities all over the country in details. therefore, besides the service providers and navigator equipment companies, the forum also invites a number of digital map suppliers. And I was also told that more than 200 companies will attend this 2-day event.
Information shows that after years of evolution, the navigation industry of China has basically become a high-tech industry, and the market will gradualluy change its orientation from automotive application to individual consumer application.

Release Date:9-27-2006