Mobile Entertainment

Location-based services are not just about finding the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts – some serious thought is now going into how
LBS can be used to enhance mobile content and social networking services.

The analysts are convinced – ABI Research reckons there’ll be 309.7 million people using mobile LBS services in the US by 2011, compared to 10.3 million in 2006.

But mobile LBS can also appear to be a rather fragmented space to the uninitiated. Among the network and device-based enabling technologies on offer are Cell ID, Enhanced Cell ID, Uplink-Time Difference of Arrival (U-TDOA), Angle of Arrival and Assisted GPS (see box).

Ofer Tziperman, president of mobile LBS specialist LocatioNet, says several factors are encouraging growth in the sector.

“Seven years ago, when mobile LBS was first being talked about as a concept, mobile data was very much in its infancy – GPRS was only just being deployed and 3G was just a bunch of expensive licences, so layering in LBS was a step too far,” he says. “Moreover, once LBS did start to appear it relied on retrieving location information from the network, which only offered accuracy of about 500 metres.

Today GPS technology offers accuracy to five metres and with devices like Nokia’s N95 are in the market the conditions are right for the first time.”

LocatioNet is gearing up to launch its amAze mobile mapping, navigation and local search app for ‘regular’ mass-market mobile phones in the UK. The same technology also underpinned Vodafone Germany’s Mobile Earth service – an aerial photo mapping app similar to Google's popular desktop equivalent.

The UK service will be free, with income generated through adverts and sponsorship, such as restaurant chain locations being highlighted using their logo on the streets of a particular city. Companies can also sponsor the ‘splash’ screen when the browser is activated.

Given the continued evolution of positioning technology, TruePosition marketing manager Brian Varano says that a hybrid approach to LBS is the best option to ensure services are tailored to specific subscriber needs and deliver new revenue opportunities to operators.

“People often assume that GPS and A-GPS is some kind of panacea for the problems that mobile LBS has faced in the past, but if you’re downtown and surrounded by tall buildings it can be difficult to get a fix,” he says.

“We can enable services that primarily use A-GPS in an ‘open sky’ environment, but when that person goes indoors it can fall back to UTDA. We can also combine both technologies to create a very high accuracy solution.”

In addition to the advances in LBS technology itself, Varano highlights the fact that handsets are now more equipped to display the kind of graphically intense information such services can deliver.

In terms of LBS apps for consumers, Liberty media-owned TruePosition’s biz dev team is working on a number of initiatives with operator and developer partners, particularly in the fields of local search, advertising and social networking.
In March this year the company acquired a controlling stake in
Useful Networks, which provides LBS integration tools to content providers.

Meanwhile, TruePosition sister company Zoombak (previously Connectid) is preparing to launch a variety of GPS-enabled devices, including mobile handsets, this summer. The New York-based company, which is run on behalf of Liberty by content giant Mobile Streams, will launch in August. One of its stated aims is to transform the part played by location in mobile entertainment.