Wireless Operators Now Pushing Location-Based Services

North America

ABI Research: Location-based services have been promoted by equipment and service vendors such as Qualcomm, Global Locate, Telcontar, MapPoint, Navstar and TomTom for some time, but wireless operators — at least in North America — have until recently resisted offering them to their customers. Until a couple of months ago, only Nextel was offering commercial Location-Based Services (LBS) in the United States. But athat situation is changing fast, with Sprint recently introducing an operator-assisted direction-finding service, and other operators set to join the LBS bandwagon in the near future. The process is under way already, and will gather momentum very quickly in 2006. LBS enable navigation services, location tracking for field service staff and accurate billing for the on-site work they carry out, shopping and entertainment (in some world regions), and personal location tracking for employees, family and friends. Operators in Japan and Korea, which have been supporting LBS for several years, are expanding the range of services available while European operators are rolling them out as well. When it comes to LBS, we’ve moved quickly from a walking pace to a run. As we forecast last year, GPS — an essential element for LBS — is starting to be included in GSM and WCDMA handsets as well as CDMA. Location-based serviceswill proliferate along with a variety of other services. Gaming, 411, SMS, MMS, photography — will all be bolstered and powered by LBS. Some LBS vendors will prosper on their own, says Hyers; others — particularly smaller firms and those developing BREW and Java applications — will do well to rely on a wireless operator as a distribution network. Location-Based Services Publ 20050622