Scientists track Kenyan elephants by fitting them with collar-mounted mobile phones. Elephants can’t use all the features of an iPhone or a Nokia N series when making trunk calls, but the latest global positioning phones now allow smaller-fingered users to use location-based services to find information of real use. Such phones tell service and content providers exactly where subscribers are. So now users can ask: “Where is the nearest Chinese restaurant, are any of my friends there, what’s the food like and how do I get there?” It’s a huge step forward.
There are opportunities for subscribers and providers alike. Businesses can coordinate their workforces, private users can coordinate their social lives and advertisers can direct their pitches with pinpoint accuracy. The downsides are few and seem surmountable – mainly high battery consumption, expensive data costs and privacy implications.
Bryan Stockwell of Mobile Commerce collects much of the data that allows companies like Orange and Carphone Warehouse to provide local content from providers such as Thomson Directories and Lastminute.com. “We are doing about 500,000 location requests per month across all our services,” he says. “This is still the tip of the iceberg on consumer services: I would say we haven’t even reached 10% of the potential in terms of use of location.”
Cinema information is always the most popular, says Stockwell but listings cry out for more: “Services to support entertainment are going to be huge – like taxi and cash machine searches.” This content is becoming available by the day and with the introduction of peer and professional reviewing it’s becoming increasingly useful and relevant. Not just what’s on at the cinema, but what’s on at the nearest cinema, whether there are any tickets left and - crucially - whether the film’s any good.
Business applications have great potential too - some already realised by early adopters such as Logistics Telecom. Alan Bloor is their network manager. He uses Mobile Communications’ data to help up to 500 companies track their delivery vans and removal trucks across Europe and the UK by analysing data from 5,000 phones. “You can see where all your vehicles are without having to call the drivers and you can then send them text messages diverting them to a new address if needed.” Truck locations appear on a map on a password-protected website. Used in combination with a product like Orange’s Mobile Forms, it allows real time changes to deliveries and routes. “It’s something I’d love to use to keep track of my kids,” says Bloor. And his wishes could soon be answered. This is one of the obvious uses for LBS technology but it is also one of the potential abuses. Being able to pinpoint your subscribers’ locations opens up many privacy questions but the issue is no elephant in the room. The CTIA Wireless Association already has Best Practices and Guidelines for Location Based Services.
“We were involved in putting together a code of practice,” says Bryan Stockwell. Before allowing people to track each other’s movements, they must show that they are adults and have permission to do so. This is often done with a credit card check and a PIN in the post process but the protocol may need more work, given the current prevalence of identity theft.
Stockwell believes that in 18 months, 80% of phones will be shipping with the global positioning (GPS) technology needed for high quality LBS content. Microsoft’s find my location service uses the current technology: the service can only improve with the greater accuracy of GPS. “Our multimap acquisition is something to use before you set out, and then send to your mobile, “says Hugh Griffiths, Director of Mobile for Microsoft UK. MSN, LiveSearch and Windows Mobile then take over.
“There were 17 million users of mobile internet in December 2007, 41% of which were in the 25-34 age group,” says Griffiths. So it’s not just children looking for friends on Bebo, although that can be done too. “There’s a buddy-finder element to our Spaces service,” he says. Justin Davies of NinetyTen has been working in this area too. His BuddyPing has 180,000 worldwide users already on WAP and is being Beta-tested for refined mobile use. BuddyPing adds context to social networking: “It overlays location onto other networks like Facebook and Twitter,” says Davies, and allows users to set up meets or locate people in their network. NinetyTen hopes to provide “for the mobile space what Instant Messaging services provided for the Internet - personalised, sociable interaction.”
ABI Research Industry Analyst Jamie Moss believes that LBS revenue will reach $13.3 billion worldwide by 2013. Like Davies, he says that adding layers and filters such as location to your searches gives crucial context and thinks that the biggest obstacle for LBS is data costs. But that will change: “Advertising-subsidised LBS and better data tariffs will soon bring this down,” he says.
Simple LBS is already being used in the African bush. Over here, increased use of context, user interaction and clever developers like Davies and Stockwell mean that users can now be guided through the UK’s concrete jungles with rich, location specific information – when you want it and where you want it.
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