What is GPS World ?
Since its inception in 1989, GPS World has been the top publication in the business and technology of global positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) industries. GPS World provides technical and business information to engineers, product designers, manufacturers, researchers, system developers, executives, and high-level managers around the world who incorporate GNSS/PNT technologies into their corporate strategies, operations, and product offerings to maximize profit and performance. GPS World’s market-segmented topic areas, deep-dives, as well as broad birds-eye-view industry coverage is what makes the brand a valuable resource for professionals in every tech field.
With a focus on technical, practical, and ever-changing applications, GPS World strives to captivate, educate, and continuously inform its readers, as well as simultaneously deliver unmatched returns for marketing partners that bring valuable products and services to market.
Engaging with GPS World
GPS World is published in print and digital formats, and is broadly available and engaged with through its many outlets and mediums, including:
- The iconic, long-standing monthly GPS World magazine.
- The regularly updated GPSWorld.com website, with plenty of free content and unlimited access + premium features available to free account holders.
- Interactive, downloadable and browser-based flip-through digital edition format.
- The breaking news and industry overview weekly Navigate! newsletter, conveniently delivered regularly to the email inboxes of professionals worldwide.
- Several market-sector newsletters focusing on specific topic areas such as autonomous, defense and surveying technologies.
- Video content available on GPS World‘s YouTube Channel.
- Regular posts, news sharing, and community interaction across social media platforms Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
The History of GPS World
While today GPS technology is a part of everyday life, in 1988 the idea of a dedicated magazine focused on an almost-unknown technology, shrouded in military guise, was a hard sell. Magazine entrepreneur Stephen Colwell had the idea of dedicating a magazine to the nascent GPS system, and with a $1,200 investment and business plan in hand, Colwell presented the concept to numerous publishers. It was Ed Aster, founding publisher of Aster Publishing, who provided approval and additional funds to launch the magazine. For Aster, “It immediately made sense, as long as you had eyes.” And thus GPS World began, as a publication of Aster Publishing, based in Eugene, Oregon.
Shortly thereafter, in 1989, GPS World’s founding editor Glen Gibbons approached Dave Wells, Alfred Kleusberg and Richard Langley — faculty members in the then Department of Surveying Engineering at the University of New Brunswick — about editing a “technology/product development column” in a new magazine. “The column should deal with issues that have broad application and interest and are presented in terms that are accessible to as wide a range of readers as possible,” Gibbons wrote. The column, called “Innovation,” was an enduring staple in the publication for years, appearing in more than 300 issues.
The magazine continued to grow in staff, contributors and advisors, broadening its well of editorial and subject-matter expertise. The evolution continued as GPS World changed publishers, and since 2012 has been stewarded by North Coast Media, based in Cleveland, Ohio, under owner Kevin Stoltman and publisher Martin Whitford.
The GPSWorld.com website, launched in 1998, publishes content previously only available in print. Between 2005 and 2007, other digital offerings such as the Digital Edition and Navigate! Weekly e-newsletter were introduced. The brand’s digital footprint continued to grow over the years, with even more reader-exclusive features made available alongside a fresh relaunch of the website in late 2025.
Just like the vast global field of satellite navigation, many things have changed and evolved since the birth of GPS World. The brand has repositioned itself over the years from its early focus on applications to the present comprehensive-yet-detailed grasp of design concepts at both the space system and integrated circuit level. We can still say, as Glen Gibbons wrote in the inaugural issue, “Perhaps the most remarkable thing about GPS today is the enthusiasm that we find everywhere among people involved with the field. We want to share that enthusiasm with our readers. GPS — our world, and welcome to it.”
Our Name
GPS World is not limited in its scope or coverage. We also cover positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technology and developments, which work with GNSS to achieve greater accuracy, availability, integrity and robustness. These include inertial sensors, eLoran, lidar, electronic compasses, cellular signal positioning, video signal positioning, odometers, wheel-speed sensors, ultra wideband, RFID, Bluetooth and more. We cover not only the U.S. Global Positioning System, but also chronicle the development of GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo, as well as WAAS, EGNOS, QZSS, GAGAN and private correction services.
Uses of GPS have spread across the landscape, the seas, into air space, into outer space, driven by designers and engineers crafting new solutions for challenging problems. Wherever the industry is heading, we will be there to cover it.