According to Global Locate, a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, TomTom has already begun manufacturing ONE devices using Global Locate's Hammerhead chip instead of SiRF's StarIII chip that originally shipped with the ONE. Hammerhead is the industry's first single die GPS solution. Global Locate's host-based GPS architecture approach means that both the TomTom software application, GPS chip, and navigation software can all share the same processor resources. The Hammerhead is a single chip manufactured in a .13 micron process.

In other words, Global Locate's Hammerhead chip is considerably less expensive to manufacture than SiRF's, and that's attractive to companies looking to cut production costs or cell phone manufacturers looking to include GPS at an attractive price-point. In fact, Global Locate told me they're predicting the cost of their GPS Hammerhead chip will drop to around $2 by 2008. That's a far cry from the estimated $15 per chip current pricing of SiRF's Star III chip, and makes the Hammerhead a viable option for mobile devices on a budget.

The real question is whether Global Locate's less expensive Hammerhead can compete with SiRF's well established Star III. Not surprisingly, Global Locate says their chip is actually superior to SiRF's. I'll be watching this very carefully, as it was SiRF's Star III chip that really moved GPS forward last year, making GPS navigation in challenging environments possible. SiRF still enjoys a 90% market share of all new GPS navigation devices, including Magellan, Garmin, and TomTom's high end unit, the GO 910. I'm all for competition, but here's to hoping this isn't a step in the wrong direction for TomTom, and that Global Locate can actually deliver a GPS chip that's as good or even better than SiRF's.

Global Locate also announced the release of Hammerhead 2 - the world's smallest GPS receiver (3.5 x 3.7 nanometers). No word yet on if / when the Hammerhead 2 will show up in a TomTom near you.