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Humans have always yearned to know where they stand in this universe and to find one’s place in this world. Location based services while not solving the philosophical question at least helps find one’s whereabouts in the world.

Navigation on the mobile phone throws open the possibility of always knowing where you are and never getting lost as long as you have a mobile phone with you. It always tells you where you should be headed; if only, it will help in setting life’s direction as well! The first location based services (LBS – broadly defined as applications & services that leverage location of the user as input) started as early as 80’s in the US for fleet management and vehicle safety. Since then, the location based services industry has come a long way. A significant number of wireless operators now have location based services for both consumer as well as enterprise. Most of these LBS services were initially based on network-based positioning technologies like cell-id. Opening up of GPS (Global Positioning Systems) for civilian use in the 90’s allowed the possibility of providing high accuracy services like navigation.



While everyone intuitively understands the criticality of location in everyday life and hence the need for location based services, LBS has not proven to be very successful till recently. So, what ailed LBS?

What ailed LBS? LBS adoption was slow to take off due to a few reasons:

• Non-availability of attractive devices at right price points that can provide accurate location; most LBS were depending on less-accurate technologies like cell-id – this meant that useful services that could make use of user’s location couldn’t be provided.
• Lack of location enabled content and applications
• Privacy concerns – Consumers were worried about Big Brother watching
• Lack of mature standards ensuring interoperability – lack of standards meant services like navigation were unavailable when users roamed across networks as well as tying the network/users down to specific handsets
• Lack of good business models from operators causing uncertainty / confusion among subscribers on potential costs
• Lack of sufficient marketing on LBS – very few consumers were aware of LBS as very few dollars went into marketing LBS from operators

What has changed?
Nearly a decade after introduction of the first LBS, the LBS industry is finally coming of age. So, what has changed? Wide availability of GPS based handsets and release of SUPL 1.0 standard has made widespread deployment of LBS possible. GPS performance in these handsets have also improved considerably for instance, there are a number of SiRFStarIII™ (www.sirf.com) based handsets now that provide GPS performance similar to/better than to GPS devices. This in turn has led to operators like Orange™, Verizon™ and Sprint Nextel™ market to aggressively A-GPS based LBS services aggressively.

Good operator business models: operators are increasingly migrating to all-you-can-eat data plans that shield the consumer from the monthly-bill-shock of seeing huge data charges for using a service like navigation. With a single data plan, consumers are motivated to try newer applications without the worry of a ticking money-meter.

Mature standards – one of the major irritants in the deployment of LBS has been the lack of consistent standards especially for A-GPS (assisted GPS). Each operator/vendor had a proprietary solution tying up handsets to operators. With SUPL 1.0, now there is an industry-wide standard to ensure interoperability.

Popularity of LBS
A number of recent research reports on LBS and GPS phones attest to the impending growth of the market:

• ABI research predicts that LBS subscriber numbers will grow from 12 million to 315 million by 2011.
• Berg Insight predicts that 60% of WCDMA phones shipped worldwide will have integrated GPS/Galileo receivers by 2010 (figure 1
• IMS research predicts a CAGR of 40% for GPS phones over the next 4 years.
• According to a recent survey conducted by map provider Tele Atlas NV™, one out of every five consumer says that built-in GPS navigation is a must in mobile phones
• A 3G study by In Stat in Oct 2006 found navigation and mapping services to be killer applications for 3G.

Innovation in LBS Applications

We are seeing a new wave of location based services which are bringing in innovative content, business models and applications. The new crop of interesting applications include

• Flickr™ integrating location with photographs for sharing (through geo tagging service)
• Social networking sites like loopt™ and Dodgeball™ social network service utilizing location
• GeoRSS services from location tagged blogging to real-time location based updates
• Cityguides for tourists providing real-time info on places they are visiting and
• SmarterAgent™ – a real-estate search application based on location

Navigation
Even as newer LBS applications and services proliferate, navigation continues to be the most successful LBS service. A typical navigation service provides turn-by-turn directions to the mobile user to get to a destination of her choice. What are the requirements for successful navigation deployment on phones?

• Easy availability of GPS enabled phones
• Sufficient bandwidth for map downloads (with 3G)
• Large LCD display and
• Sufficient memory for navigation applications

Figure 1. Sales of GPS enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets

All of these necessary conditions have been well addressed with technology advances in the recent years enabling rapid growth of navigation services on phone.

User experience for navigation on mobile phones has now matured to an acceptable level for the consumer-mass market. In addition, the tremendous popularity of portable navigation devices (PNDs) have led to high GPS / navigation awareness among consumers making it easier for end-users to adopt phone-based navigation.


Figure 2. Finding your way

Phone-based GPS navigation is today at the same stage where camera-phones were five years back – limited models, big potential, ready-to-take off. Today, camera phones outsell digital cameras by a good margin and same can be expected with GPS phones with navigation – Visant strategies estimates that shipments of GPS phones in 2007 will double to 126.6 million units.

Even as technology was maturing, a few missteps impeded successful deployment of navigation services by wireless operators:

• Navigation service were buried under operator portal/deck thereby making it difficult for consumers to discover navigation services
• Unpredictable or high costs for data for location based services causing consumer concern and
• Lack of serious marketing from the operators to increasing consumer awareness

With operators now putting a clear and thought-out LBS strategy in place, we hope that these get resolved soon.

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