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By
Tim Young
Location has always been a tremendously important aspect of business. We all know the old cliché about its importance in real estate, and that same battle-cry of “Location, Location, Location” has found its way into countless other industries, from advertising to entertainment.
However, the growth of location-based services (LBS) underscores the changing nature of “location” as a concept. Subscribers are more mobile than ever, and their constantly changing spatial orientation is fabulously useful information. Once concrete, location is now dynamic.
These mobile consumers provide considerable opportunity for smart service providers, in part because they have demonstrated, through their usage patterns that location-based services are of increasing interest. Furthermore, location-based services provide a rare opportunity for proactive, positive interaction between the provider and the consumer. The overall customer experience can be enhanced through the smart leveraging of location.
Location-based services, as a concept,
are exploding. The growth has been
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Subscribers are more mobile than ever, and their location is fabulously useful information. |
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appeared in a report that came just 8
months after a report by Frost &
Sullivan that the LBS market would be
worth $3billion by 2013, indicating that
the optimism for growth in the LBS
arena is gaining speed with
considerable rapidity. The precise dollar
figure for LBS services isn’t a known
quantity, but the potential for growth is
clear.
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much more rapid than analysts forecast
a few years ago. Back in 2006, In-Stat
predicted that by 2010, some 1.1
million Americans would be subscribers
to mobile location-based services. Fast-
forward to 2010, and Foursquare,
alone, accounts for 2.5 million active
users, with Gowalla approaching
400,000. In addition, Google Trends
reported in August that Foursquare
sees 5.5 Million unique visitors per
month, and Gowalla generates another
830,000. And these numbers are just
coming from two services. Google
Latitude, Brightkite, MyTown, Loopt,
and other services are also out there,
generating substantial numbers.
And where there are that many users,
there’s significant opportunity for
revenue increases. That much we
know. Juniper research estimates that
the location market will be worth $12.7
billion by 2014. That’s a particular
interesting number, because it
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Beyond Increased Revenue
However, there’s more to the picture than just revenue increases. Location-based services have the potential to go a long way towards achieving a very distinct level of service differentiation for savvy service providers. That is, in part, because in addition to the general location-based services listed above, there’s a brand new breed of LBS that’s beginning to emerge that is focused, specific, and incredibly useful for certain subscribers.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Dr. John Bates, CTO of Progress Software, outlined the possibilities of location, which he declared the “next big thing” in the telecom space. Therein, Bates notes that location is valuable for service providers especially when used in conjunction with context about the specific customer.
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