Recently in LBS Category
Loopt has added new features to connect users to the most relevant
places and people nearby. This brand new version of Loopt enhances users' ability to
discover the world around them -- revealing who's around, what to do, and
where to go.Loopt's Pulse, offers dynamically-generated, relevant local content about places and events from web sources. Pulse offers the power of friends' recommendations, the Loopt community's real-time feedback, and information from premium, local content sources to help users find what to do.
The new Loopt application also offers updates to its core service, including improved check-in functionality, the ability to rate local places and events, and a feed of the latest activities of friends listed in real-time.Skyhook Wireless, released its July report on trends in location-aware apps from Apple's App Store, Google's Android Marketplace, Blackberry App World, Nokia's Ovi Store, and the Palm App Catalog.
The report shows the evolution of LBS app pricing in the two longest running stores, the Android Marketplace and Apple App Store. In both stores, $0.99 is the most popular paid category, and only a handful of apps sell for $6.00 to $8.99. Some location apps sell for $9.99 or higher in both stores. Most of these high-priced apps are navigation or sports-related like golf and sailing.
The most popular types of LBS apps is travel, followed by Navigation, Social Networking, Lifestyle and Sports/Fitness.
In the first half of 2009 there was an abnormal spike of hundreds of
$0.99 apps, due to the release of several batches of "Bulk Apps." These
are template-based apps sold at the same price point which have the
same look and feel but swap out content. For example, one developer
sells over 850 travel apps based on the same template, but switches out
content based on specific locations like Paris or Costa Rica. Around
1/3 of Apple LBS apps are these mass-produced local search or travel
guide apps. There are over 50,000 App Store apps, and this massive
number is often referenced as a sign of the tremendous growth of the
App Store. But, it is important to understand that bulk apps make up
much of this volume.
RIM has confirmed that it has bought Dash Navigation but hasn't revealed many details on the purchase.Dash's technology turns a personal navigation device (GPS) into a traffic reporting tool, also called a traffic probe. Last year, Dash made a device that tracked its users' road speed and location and created traffic reports for other Dash PND users. The device didn't sell well and was pulled from the market.
RIM has not reported if BlackBerry smartphones will in turn become traffic probes to create a traffic service.
NAVTEQ, expanded its travel and leisure guide portfolio with
the addition of Lonely Planet for NAVTEQ: Travel Guide.
At launch, the travel guide will cover 19 cities in Australia and New Zealand, with expansion planned to other countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand soon thereafter.
Offering reviews for thousands of points of interest (POIs) throughout Australia and New Zealand - both of which ranked among the top five travel destinations according to Lonely Planet's 2008 Travellers' Pulse Survey - the content enables navigation applications to provide recommendations about where to stay, eat or spend leisure time.
Lonely Planet for NAVTEQ lends itself to quick and flexible integration into location-aware applications. First, Lonely Planet content is precisely matched to the NAVTEQ map, enabling consumers to navigate to their desired destinations. NAVTEQ also leverages integration-friendly formats and innovative location referencing which will speed integration into customer applications. Plus, NAVTEQ's ongoing relationship with Lonely Planet also allows updates to Lonely Planet's content to be accurately reflected in the product.
AT&TThe FamilyMap service enables users to see details such as location on a map and surrounding landmarks like schools and parks. Users can also toggle between satellite and interactive street maps. Families can customize their mapping experience by assigning a name and photo to each device within their account, and can also label places they visit frequently, like "Home" or "Soccer Field."
Through the tool's schedule checks option, parents can receive alerts at specified times via text or e-mail. For example, parents could request a schedule check every weekday at 4 p.m. to check on their child's location. In another scenario, parents of a teenager who drives could use the tool to check on their child's location instead of calling or texting the teen, which might present a distraction while the teen is on the road.
The first thirty days of the FamilyMap service is free and then after that it is $9.99 a month for two family members or $14.99 for up to five family members.
"AT&T FamilyMap is a terrific tool to help busy
families keep track of each other, as well as a great way to check up
on loved ones for any reason, such as to touch base with elderly family
members," said Mark Collins, vice president of Voice and Data Products
for AT&T
Mobility and Consumer Markets. "More than 60 percent of
AT&T wireless customers are part of a family plan or multiple line
account, so there's a considerable number of our subscribers whom we
believe will find this service beneficial."
FusionOne and Useful Networks are creating a solution for lost phones. The service will allow cell phone owners to locate lost or stolen mobile phones, and remotely delete personal contact information from it.FusionOne, Useful Networks, are working together to provide a more connected and more protected society via mobile technology. The two companies are now partners, providing mobile security for FusionOne's Network Address Book customers.
FusionOne's Network Address Book solution will be integrated with Useful Networks' UN Platform to provide phone location and remote purge capability to mobile consumers.
NAVTEQ, announcdes the
semifinalists of the Americas edition of the NAVTEQ Global LBS
Challenge.
Fourteen contestants have been selected to move on to Final Judging in Americas and the winners will be announced during an awards ceremony on April 2, 2009 during CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas. The awards ceremony is open to all CTIA attendees and will also be broadcast live online at www.LBSChallenge.com. The semifinalists, by category, for NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge - The Americas include:
Content
- CellSoul, Inc: Azinfo by CellSoul is a mosque-locator and a location-based timings calculator for Muslim prayers.
- Loci Smart, LLC: Loci Smart provides localized and personalized content, ads, maps and directions to users based on profile preferences.
- Yojo Mobile, Inc: Yojo Mama finds parents what they need, when and where they need it most.
- Creativity Software: Rough Guides Mobile Travel Guide is a location aware city guide with User Generated content and social networking features.
- Cutlass: Hollywood-USA is a GPS tour guide to movie locations nearest you and includes RSS news feeds from The Hollywood Reporter and social networked Make-a-Scene.
Navigation
- Gowrabattini, Inc: Where is My Car helps you to never wander for a parked car - park the car, set the location, navigate back to the car.
- TrafficZag, Inc: Traffic Share facilitates location of traffic events such as accidents among commuters.
- Urban Mapping, Inc: URBANWARE Parking provides drivers with accurate and timely off-street parking information that can be incorporated into LBS applications.
Frost & Sullivan has awarded Sprint the
2008 Award for Market Leadership in the Consumer LBS Market for its
open approach to developing GPS applications for mobile
phones. Sprint offers a wide variety of consumer GPS applications and recently announced that it will offer developers open access to two location aggregation platforms.
Frost & Sullivan projects that the U.S. market for wireless carriers' consumer LBS applications will reach approximately $3.3 billion in annual revenues by 2013.
Sprint LBS services include: Sprint Navigation, which provides GPS-enabled, turn-by-turn
driving directions with 3D moving maps, one-click traffic rerouting and
more than 10 million local listings. Sprint Family Locator, which
enables a parent to use their phone or PC to find the location of a
family member, which is displayed on a map along with the address,
surrounding landmarks and accuracy of the information within a
specified radius.
Xiam Technologies announced that
subscribers can now receive recommendations to guide them to
places and events when they are on the go or traveling. Xiam has enhanced its MPOS (My Personal Offers System) platform to deliver recommendations ranging from helping subscribers find their way around new cities to locating products and services they need quickly, wherever they are.
Through
the addition of two new algorithms to its state-of-the-art
recommendations engine, Xiam will now make location-based
recommendations and assisted mobile Internet discovery available to its
global customer base.
The platform's open APIs provide operators, publishers and third party brands the ability to make geographically specific offers of content and services to subscribers. Location-aware recommendations are accurate to the latitude and longitude of the device, providing relevant results in real-time for anything from local hotspots to retail outlets.
According to Technology's
latest joint Mobile Advertising Report for Limbo, iPhone users are more than twice as likely as non-iPhone
users to browse the mobile web and use location-based services (1 in 3 used LBS) while only on in ten mobile users used location-based services.iPhoners are also more than three times as likely to use a location-based service (LBS) or a location-based social network. More than 80 percent of iPhone users taking advantage of non-voice mobile data services, compared to just over 60 percent of non-iPhone users.
One in ten mobile phone users in the U.S. used a location-based service such as a map, friend or restaurant finder in Q4. The 25 - 34 age group saw the highest levels of interest in this type of offering, with 22 percent penetration.
In contrast, iPhone users are four times as likely to recall LBS ads as non-iPhone users. While 33 percent of mobile consumers recall seeing mobile advertisements this quarter, 41 percent of iPhone users recall seeing mobile ads. The vast majority of these ads were seen in SMS text messages, twice as much as mobile Web ads, which are the second most common mobile ad viewed.
Significantly fewer consumers see other forms of mobile advertising - unless they have an iPhone. iPhone owners are twice as likely to see mobile web ads and four times as likely to see an ad while playing a game on their phone or while using a location-based service.
Personal locator devices and service provider Location Based Technologies, says that its PocketFinder service has been downloaded more
than 10,000 times since its debut as an Apple iPhone and Google Android
smartphone application two months ago.The software allows users to access real-time location, zones, speed alerts, and travel history on their smartphones. It can be used to locate friends or family and costs $4.95 a month.
PocketFinder will also be available for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices soon.
Sprint is partnering with location
platforms Veriplace by WaveMarketd WHERE by uLocate Communications (www.where.com).
They want to help developers create new location-based services for Sprint
customers.
Both platforms provide developers with tools to
create and launch location-enabled applications,
Third-party developers will be able to location-enable their applications, WAP sites, Web sites and SMS campaigns through a Web-service API. For more information, please visit http://developer.where.com.
Loopt is now available on
Android Market, Google's new app store. Loopt users can share their location between carrier networks
with fellow Loopt users on AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Boost, MetroPCS
and T-Mobile.
Loopt is currently supported on more than 100 handsets including the iPhone andBlackBerry and is now available on select phones with the Android Market
The Loopt features include:
- Background location updating which enables
users to receive alerts when a friend is nearby.
- Users can also switch between map modes for a satellite view of their friend map or to monitor traffic delays.
- Users can share their information with popular web services such s Facebook, MySpace and Twitter or personal blogs and Web sites.
Loopt is available for free in the United States from the Android Market beginning today. For more information about Loopt please visithttp://www.loopt.com.
The recent launches of GPS-enabled touchscreen smartphones including the BlackBerry Storm and G1 are fueling interest in handset-based navigation and location based services (LBS).
Even in an economic downturn, it drives both third party LBS application development and the roll out of LBS infrastructure by carriers to support the much needed Secure User Plane Location (SUPL)-compliant Assisted GPS functionality.
Mobile location-based social networking is expected to become a key driver for the uptake of location-based services as it provides a unifying framework for a large set of applications such as friend finders, local search and geo-tagging. While many LBS applications will include features allowing the sharing of real-time experiences via fixed social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, fully-fledged mobile location-based social networking sites will also gain momentum with more than 82 million subscriptions expected by 2013.
Trimble and AT&T helps keep you fit with the AllSport GPS an exercise tracking application that tracks exercise activity via GPS.AllSport GPS keeps track of time, speed, calorie burned, and distance traveled during outdoor
workouts such as running, walking, biking and snowboarding. Users can store workouts to monitor progress, view weekly activity logs, map their favorite routes and share activities with friends.
Through the Trimble Outdoors Web site ( http://www.trimbleoutdoors.com), subscribers can also:
- Browse an online library of professional and user-generated trips.
- Upload and recommend routes and customize trips taken by others.
- Download maps in topographic, street and aerial views to their wireless phone.
- Send guided workouts to their phones and "race" against the person who
- originally uploaded the workout.
AllSport GPS is available on select GPS-enabled AT&T mobile phones for a $5.99 monthly subscription. It can be purchased from the AT&T MEdia Mall. New subscribers can sign up for a free seven-day trial.
Here's a new iPhone app for skiiers called Snocator (pronounced "snow-kay-ter")
that uses interactive GPS trail maps to show users exactly where they are
on the mountain, and plan out their next run, rendezvous or o hot
chocolate from the ski lodge.
Users
can also check snow reports, mountain cams and weather forecasts to get
up-to-date information on their favorite resorts as they plan their next ski
vacation, or just their afternoon on the slopes.
Location Based Technologies (LBT), has fully tested this service for just-launched T-Mobile G1.
The Android-based PocketFinder service is now available for a 15-day free trial and then will be offered for $4.95/month per phone through the month of November. It will remain at that price as long as the account is kept current and in good standing. You may download from www.pocketfinder.com or from Android Market at www.android.com/market.
The Field Force Manager provides complete management control in near real-time by allowing the main office to
- Locate remote employees;
- Schedule and dispatch jobs;
- Receive fleet, job and employee reports.
- Submit timecards, customer and job status information to the business office.
- Get turn-by-turn driving directions to new jobs.
Starting at $15.00 per month, Field Force Manager from Verizon Wireless is available with unlimited e-mail on BlackBerryInternet Service or Windows Mobile 6.1. www.verizonwireless.com
The new service combines the convenience of location and personal choice with the immediacy and ease of purchasing tickets or making reservations directly from any smartphone or Internet-accessible cell phone. The site launched its mobile capabilities by giving away two free tickets worth up to $250 to registered users every 60 days.
