Personal navigation most popular LBS application

29 Jul 2008

According to ABI Research, personal navigation will remain the most important LBS category due to many innovative LBS applications such as friend finders and location-based search will be launched in the next few years.

"Enterprise LBS applications for asset and vehicle tracking and work force management will become an important revenue generator for carriers in the future as companies will increasingly deploy mobile solutions to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve customer service. As the reliability and performance of mobile enterprise solutions improves and the concerns about maintenance costs, data protection and integrity are addressed, corporations will increasingly adopt mobile solutions and LBS applications in their daily activities", said Dominique Bonte, principal analyst of ABI research.

There is an important opportunity for providers of location-based platforms such as Mobile Location Centres (MLCs). Ericsson, Telecommunications Systems (TCS) and Nokia Siemens Networks will be able to grow their LBS infrastructure business lines as carriers globally deploy LBS solutions.

Being the leading region for LBS deployments due to the E911 emergency calling regulation resulting in the ubiquitous availability of GPS based CDMA handsets so long, the US is expected to be caught up by Europe and Asia-Pacific with built-in GPS receivers become widely available.

In addition to the carriers, independent application and software providers will benefit from this trend by starting to offer carrier-independent LBS solutions, potentially relegating carriers to a role as mere bandwidth providers.

According to Bonte carriers will need to offer cross-network interoperability and open up their networks in order to address this threat.