On Thursday April 29, 2010 in Santa Clara at Silicon Valley Bank, the Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA) presented “How Does Mobile Device Selection Influence LBS — Business Models, Roadmaps for Development, and End User Choice?” Hugh Fletcher of Verizon Wireless moderated panelists Scott Hotes of WaveMarket, Marc Kleinmaier of Nokia, Patrick Mork of GetJar and Ashu Pande of SiRF Technology.
Early Global Positioning Services (GPS) made it possible for companies like Garmin, Magellan or TomTom to sell standalone Personal Navigation Devices (PND). Today’s advanced GPS integrated into smart phones makes Location Based Services (LBS) applications possible. Now it is spreading from the smart phone market to low-end phones and even non-phone wireless devices like the Apple iPad.
How do you make money with LBS when most of the world uses pre-paid phones? You place ads in the application. Any retailer will pay good money to have their ads in your app if it results in LBS sales.
Any device that knows where you are all the time raises privacy concerns. There is a business opportunity for people who want to opt out of such a system. The principle is similar to Caller ID and Caller ID block. Technology creates a problem and then sells you a solution.
Copyright 2010 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
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