50% of Nokia mobiles to sport GPS by 2012

Nokia plans to add GPS to half of its mobile phone range in a bid to expand into alternative network streams.

Nokia might be the number one mobile phone manufacturer in the world, but as convergence descends on the mobile phone, GPS has become one of the ‘must-have’ features and the Finnish company intends to capitalise.

According to Reuters, Michael Halbherr, the head of Nokia's location-based activities, intends to continue with Nokia's goal, set last year, to see around 50 per cent of its phones sporting a GPS chip in 2010 to 2012.

"We are planning to ship 35 million GPS units this year," Halbherr said, "and many more location-enabled phones that use cell-towers to orient themselves on the map."

"You will see few 'E' or 'N' Series phones without GPS," he added.

Out of sight… won't matter anymore

GPS use has increased dramatically in the last few years with the advent of devices such as TomTom satellite navigation systems. Adding the feature to mobile phones might be a relatively new phenomenon, with models such as the Nokia N95, but has quickly become a must-have feature for new high-end phones.

Advanced GPS (aGPS) is the new evolution of the mobile technology, allowing for more accurate locating of devices. Geotagging on photos taken on phones, which embeds location info into the file, is set to become the new craze added to social networking too.

Google has added the ability to roughly locate mobile phones by triangulating its signal to its Google maps application, but it appears soon you’ll never be able to hide ever again.