Major leading countries and players worldwide - Location Based Services

From INVESaTWIKI

Major leading countries and players worldwide - Location Based Services

There are regional characteristics in the LBS market. In Japan, for several years, numerous in-car navigation services have been deployed, mainly for information and guidance purposes. Now, services based on the implementation of satellite navigation chipsets in mobile phones are already available. KKDI launched a mobile phone service named GPS Keitai. Among the various services offered, the user can locate himself on a map, ask for personalised information regarding a point of interest (such as restaurants) or a trip (such as directions) but also train or metro timetables.

Benefiting from falling prices, GPS receivers may also induce applications on focusing solely on location. Nextel with Trimble offer the used concept of Trimble Outdoors that enables any hiker to download maps and route plans from Internet to phones.

In the USA at the end of March 2004, the mobile phone operator Sprint had sold over 21 million A-GPS enabled handsets over 3 years and 99% of all handsets they sell are now A-GPS enabled.

In 2004,Wherify Wireless announced that consumers could now order Wherify’s slim, small and lightweight satellite navigation Locator Phone to see the real-time location of family members or valuable property directly on the Internet or any phone for around $150.

In Europe, location-based services are developing more slowly. A study from Frost and Sullivan in July 2004 estimated that the European LBS market would reach e 200M in 2007, a small fraction of the global markets mentioned above. However, several applications are now spreading, creating new market opportunities. Emergency services across the European Union receive around 80 million calls every year. 40 million of these are from mobiles and this number is still growing. However, although few GPS-enabled GSM handsets are available, many of the 3G handsets now coming on to the market are GPS-enabled.

Since 2002, a directory service is available on the market in 1,600 German cities, available through Vodafone.Working off a technology developed by Troy, the service helps people map their evenings out by giving directions to the nearest clubs, cinemas, petrol stations, cash machines etc.

Telcontar, a navigations service company with business activities in Europe and the US, launched the gpmobile, a GPS - and speech - enabled mobile navigation service in spring 2004, running over wireless networks and smartphones.The subscribers speak a destination into their phone, the service determines an optimised route to the requested destination and provides the necessary information during the itinerary. [1]

References

[1] Galileo Joint Undertaking
"Business in satellite navigation - An overview of market developments and emerging applications".