Interest in mobile LBS continues to grow
Despite the hype regarding this technology since around the year 2000; many analysts are still predicting big things for the future of mobile LBS, particularly as handsets with smarter capabilities and user interfaces continue to permeate the market.
This growth is also being driven by the ever-increasing adoption of LBS by mobile operators in order to customise services based upon a user’s location. LBS are considered to be one of the important services that wireless carriers hope to utilise and integrate with IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), as carriers slowly proceed towards an evolution from circuit-switched infrastructures to IP-based packet-switched infrastructures.
Digital media companies like Google, Facebook and Nokia also continue to show enormous interest in the potential of this technology, as do start-ups like Foursquare, Gowalla, aka-aki, Loopt, Rummble – just to name a few.
LBS are being integrated into social networking with Gowalla and Foursquare launching location-based social networking applications. It has also been reported that in 2010 Facebook plans to offer an opt-in service to users which they can use to indicate their location to other users. Twitter is also beginning to move in this direction with posted updates incorporating the location of the user’s phone.
A study from Gartner forecast there would be 95 million LBS subscribers worldwide in 2009, up from around 41 million in 2008.
A report from ABI Research in 2008 found that revenue from LBS should reach over $13 billion worldwide by 2013. A 2010 report from Juniper Research came to a similar conclusion, forecasting $12.7 billion in revenue in 2014.
For further information, see separate report: Global – Mobile Media – Content & Services Trends.
Tagged in: Global
