The balance of power in the GPS market will shift from portable navigation devices to mobile handsets, with navigation-enabled mobile phones expected to start outselling personal navigation devices (PNDs) next year. Minneapolis-based market research firm Telematics Research Group (TRG) reports that Garmin and TomTom may be the worldwide market leaders today, but mobile phone manufacturers Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), LG (SEO: 066570) and Samsung are expected to quickly takeover their lead, reflecting the growing importance of connectivity.

TRG estimates 30 million personal navigations devices (PNDs) were sold worldwide last year, as opposed to 20 million navigation-enabled mobile phones, for a total of 50 million units in 2007. By 2015, they expect the total sales figure to grow to more than 500 million. Four hundred fifty million of those devices will be mobile, while a mere 50 million will be PNDs. They also predict that Nokia will dominate the market, and will sell over 180 million devices in 2015, compared to TomTom’s 25 million. TRG estimates that Nokia sold 5 million navigation-enabled handsets last year.

The popularity in navigation-enabled mobile phones is being driven by new applications and services brought on by the merging of location based data, points of interest data, and user generated content such as ratings of local businesses. TRG believes that navigation-enabled devices could be used for auto navigation and pedestrian navigation as well.