A report by IMS Research says that over one third of smartphones sold in 2014 will have a gyroscope, accounting for over 200 million phones sold that year.
While gaming has been the early driver for the need for a gyroscope, Schreck also notes augmented reality and “user interface innovations” as other reasons gyroscopes will be included in future handsets (and we agree that all of those uses will be important).
Schreck also believes that indoor navigation will be a major driver of gyroscopes, predicting that phone sensors (including the gyroscope and accelerometer) will be used by to judge a person’s location indoors (where GPS doesn’t generally work). However, Schreck concedes that the technology required to interpret that sensory output doesn’t exist yet – that said, how much gyroscopes will play into sensory proximity is unclear – we see Wi-Fi positioning, a compass and and Near-Field Communications as more logical choices, but certainly a gyroscope helps to add better motion detection.
Assuming that handset manufacturers won’t have too hard of a time integrating gyroscopes into their next-generation handsets, IMS’ prediction of over one third of smartphones with a gyroscope in four years seems reasonable to us.
More short term, IMS analyst Chris Schreck says that, ““While the iPhone is the first to market with a gyroscope, I expect other handset designs to include gyroscopes before the end of 2010,” with the market for gyroscopes in phones growing by 150% between 2010 and 2011.
iPhone 4 owners: have you found any use for your gyroscope yet? Developers: what, if anything do you plan to do with those 200 million gyroscopes?
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