Mobile Entertainment

In fact, maps often make us incredibly unhappy - think of all  those arguments with friends or partners about that left turn you should have taken six miles ago.

This might also explain why location-based mobile content services - primarily games - have never really taken off. Plenty of people have tried. Most of the apps have necessitated roaming a city tracking opponents to (virtually) kill.

But really, who can be bothered? Humans are lazy. Gamers are lazier. If there was a mobile game that could locate the whereabouts of the nearest Dominos or the closest pair of clean pants, it would sell millions.

So does LBS/GPS/Satnav have a future in mobile beyond local search and mapping services (which are in fact growing very nicely)? Maybe we'll find out if Nokia has plans for Navteq's technology beyond plying N95 owners with alternative routes through Slough that avoid the A4.

Certainly we're going to see more devices in the market from all manufacturers that offer GPS 'out of the box', so finally they'll be an obvious target market for content providers to aim for.

GPS, however, is free to use (at least after a satnav device and map pack has been bought by the user). That's a big problem in the mobile industry. Operators aren't interested in data services unless, well, they make money from the data.

Quite understandable and, human laziness aside, probably one of the main reasons LBS content hasn't set the world alight - the odd bit of traffic from map downloads and a bit of A-GPS doesn't really cut the mustard.

So what's needed are business models that make LBS content compelling not only for the end-user, but for service providers too. That means subscriptions. And that means content apps that offer GPS as part of their USP, not necessarily all of it.

Maybe the breakthrough LBS content app will be a game, maybe it will be some form of social networking - we simply don't know. We're not developers, we just write about this stuff. But there has to be a way. Just please don't make us run around.

Now, where's that Dominos menu...