A
great deal of speculation on the direction of mobile marketing in 2008 has
centered on delivery of location based services (LBS). Industry observers
are questioning whether this will be the year when this holy grail of mobile
applications finally sees significant adoption.
Few
deny the appeal of the convenience and targeting capabilities promised by LBS,
yet, until recently, efforts to deliver such services to the mainstream have
been hindered by cross-platform and technical limitations.
This year GPS will become a standard feature in new smartphones and Google Maps for Mobile’s My Location service will be made available to
millions of non-smart phone users. As a result, the technical limitations of LBS will
no longer a major obstacle to development.
While
mobile phones are seen as the principal platform for LBS delivery they are not
the only contender. Recent widespread
adoption of personal and in-vehicle navigation units have given the race to
deliver LBS a new dimension. Navigation units have always been designed to
deliver GPS location information and, when considered in combination with
comparatively larger screens and two-way data transmission, the devices are
ideally suited for LBS.
Personal
navigation units are being scooped up at a tremendous rate and, while their
market penetration is nowhere near that of mobile phones, there will soon be
enough of them on the street to put them in the category of “viable content
delivery platform.”
A further indicator that nav units are coming
of age is the recent revelation that one of the first units capable
of two-way data transmission, the Dash, runs on an open source embedded
version of Linux, OpenMoko. If
more manufactures follow their lead we may see some truly exceptional native
and web-based applications for two-way nav units very soon.
Dan Neumann
Comments
Connections
Look for Mobile to usurp Personal Nav Devices in the next 18 months…
From moconews.net:
http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-navigation-enabled-mobiles-to-overtake-personal-navigations-devices/
Mobiles To Overtake Dedicated Navigation Devices: Report
By Dianne See Morrison – Fri 04 Jan 2008 05:36 AM PST
The balance of power in the GPS market will shift from portable navigation devices to mobile handsets, with navigation-enabled mobile phones expected to start outselling personal navigation devices (PNDs) next year. Minneapolis-based market research firm Telematics Research Group (TRG) reports that Garmin and TomTom may be the worldwide market leaders today, but mobile phone manufacturers Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), LG (SEO: 066570) and Samsung are expected to quickly takeover their lead, reflecting the growing importance of connectivity.
TRG estimates 30 million personal navigations devices (PNDs) were sold worldwide last year, as opposed to 20 million navigation-enabled mobile phones, for a total of 50 million units in 2007. By 2015, they expect the total sales figure to grow to more than 500 million. Four hundred fifty million of those devices will be mobile, while a mere 50 million will be PNDs. They also predict that Nokia will dominate the market, and will sell over 180 million devices in 2015, compared to TomTom’s 25 million. TRG estimates that Nokia sold 5 million navigation-enabled handsets last year.
The popularity in navigation-enabled mobile phones is being driven by new applications and services brought on by the merging of location based data, points of interest data, and user generated content such as ratings of local businesses. TRG believes that navigation-enabled devices could be used for auto navigation and pedestrian navigation as well.