With technology rapidly evolving
new mobile phones with multiple
features are flooding the markets.
The intense competition has given
rise to a number of value-added
services, the hottest of which is
LBS, short-form for location-based
services.
Thanks to LBS, now one can know
not only one’s location but
also the whereabouts of one’s
family members and friends and navigate
through new places without being
lost.
For the record, LBS are not new.
They have gone through the initial
and usual phases of excitement and
hype so much so that billions of
dollars were said to be on offer
for the taking. Not surprisingly,
many companies happily jumped onto
the bandwagon in the new gold rush.
This was way back in the late 90s
when LBS first made forays into
market consciousness. Two, three
years into the new millennium, all
the players, in particular, mobile
operators, discovered to their dismay
that there was a thorny side to
the rosy picture. To be fair to
them, the systems available then
were not accurate enough (1000m
and up), which naturally yielded
less than desirable results for
the end users. Applications and
handsets were pokey. Add to that,
there was and (still is), a perception
that these services are somehow
spooky. The result was dissatisfied
subscribers, poor uptake and a weak
return on investment. Innovative
services like Friend Locator, Find
My Nearest (pub, ATM etc) never
really took off. “Uptake was
a catastrophe,” declared Ralph
Eric Kunz, vice-president of multimedia
experiences for handset giant Nokia,
in one of his interviews. Mobile
resource management was the only
silver lining in the cloud that
was LBS.
Things have started changing since
2005 and now there is a renewed
interest in LBS. Cellular carriers
have finally stabilised their network
platforms and position determination
technologies with A-GPS and TDOA.
Nearly all the major carriers have
2.5 G on a single network platform.
3.5G is well on its way too. Different
types of handsets with expandable
memory, graphic display capabilities
and user interface mechanisms are
flooding the market on a daily basis.
Creation and stabilisation of standards,
protocols and application developer
programmes and tools for both platform/middleware
and handsets, such as Java, MLP,
OpenLS, J2ME (GSM) and BREW (CDMA)
have dispelled the confusion that
was prevalent earlier among location
application developers on what and
how to design. The penetration of
mobiles into the mass market has
created some sort of awareness among
the customers about features beyond
voice. More importantly, operators
are now targeting individual LBS
segments replacing the “one-application-fits-all”
approach.
Joe Astroth, Director, Autodesk
Location Services, once said about
LBS: “It’s a killer
application that got killed before
it got into the mainstream.”
He has always maintained that LBS
is a killer enabler and the way
things turned out, one cannot but
agree with him. By location enabling
existing applications and introducing
innovative services, mobile operators
stand to gain.
