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Location-Based Services and Market Insight

Fig a. Four major LBS elements

Much of the ongoing challenges marketers face are a) finding prospective audiences and b) successfully reaching out to them, in both influential and appropriate contexts. Success is actually a direct outcome of the proper message delivered in the perfect and timely manner.

Ever-changing client behavior, market saturation and a growing media sector demand want marketers to consistently evaluate their outreach to ensure success. Over time, as consumers evolved their media utilization and buying behavior, marketers adopted suit in order to remain relevant. The greatest change in consumer behavior has

“Location-based services bring some of the hippest opportunities in mobile commerce for enterprises.”

Location Transforms the Whole Lot

Incredible good, Estimated Growth

The LBS marketplace has transformed drastically before decade as gizmos are more location aware than previously, and customers are demanding LBS apps. Local and world-wide advancement is predicted for all types of LBS apps, for enterprise (business) markets plus consumer markets. This is the time for mobile operators to make the most of LBS growth to enhance customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue.

The market for Location Based Services is predicted to mature briskly over the next four years. Driven by a growing number of location-enabled apps and gizmos, the number of location-enabled customers will increase through 2017 at a compound annual rate of growth of about 10 percent.

Global Trends

For many mobile users, LBS have become an integral part of the day-to-day experience. Maps and directions now come incorporated with the majority of smartphones, family and workforce locator applications have become mainstream and LBS-enabled technologies, social networking and mobile marketing are converging. These significant developments in LBS have raised consumer and organization awareness, supported requirement and, simultaneously, elevated privacy concerns.

“To provide a value-added experience to the mobile phone users, LBS are a highly featured and high-revenue element to wireless service providers. Analysts and market watchers consider LBS as a paradigm-shifter for wireless service providers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and others planning to draw in new customers, boost competitive differentiation, increase value-added-service (VAS) profits, strengthen customer loyalty, and lower customer churn.”

The entire mobile services value chain appears to achieve from the LBS trend: application software providers, handset vendors, wireless network equipment providers, GPS chip set vendors, and the automotive industry are all growing to be major beneficiaries of LBS development.

Enterprise LBS Revenue

The LBS industry includes two primary segments: consumer and enterprise. Figure 2 shows the estimated enterprise LBS revenue and world-wide growth of consumer relative to one another. Enterprise LBS revenue is significantly higher than consumer LBS revenue since LBS applications are provided free of cost to the consumers, in return for advertisement revenue. Location based application also create opportunities for community growth/engagement

Figure 2. Projected world LBS services revenue by LBS market segment

While initial LBS requirement was led by consumer demand for personal navigation, now mobile users nowadays expect localized, customized, and timely access to additional information and services from their smartphones and tablets. As a result, sustained worldwide development is expected for all application types.

Figure 3 presents the anticipated breakdown of LBS revenue by application type in the year 2017.

Figure 3 Global LBS revenue by application (USD millions)“Mobility offers decision support tools”

The enhanced location-based services can help enterprise receive solution for management and racking of assets during transportation and remote workers management. LBS has an incredible potential so far as mobile marketing is concerned, seeing that they enable marketers to recognize particularly which of their users has an interest in their service or product and to what extent they communicate with the same.

Most of the smartphones and tablets come with location awareness capability than previously and these devices can easily determine their own position without assistance from the mobile operator’s network. These devices have fueled the acceptance and demand for LBS.

Whereas apps meet some consumer demand, sometimes these apps, while free to the consumer,

How LBS Can Benefit Your Business

Whereas apps meet some consumer demand, sometimes these apps, while free to the consumer, have boundaries: only work on specific devices, only work with GPS availability, just allow subscribers to identify their position, which may be slow to provide location positions, and are not protected (location positions may be “spoofed”).

Enterprises demand sophisticated and more secure apps, such as asset/workforce locator, friend/family locator, apps that come with secure, “unspoofable” location determinations, and apps which are capable of locating not only location-enabled handsets but all handsets.

Such advanced applications certainly drive the highest data-centric revenue and value-added service revenue.

Countless Location Based Services nowadays merge concepts from many of the types listed below. The examples below are explained with regards to functionality. Many of them could, actually, be recognized via an array of mobile media including mobile web sites, downloadable applications, messaging, or Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Types of Location Based Services for Enterprises

Navigation - Provides walking, driving, or other directions; generally “turn by turn”. Example: Google Maps

Family/friend tracker/finder: Provides functionality to identify other trustd users’ location in real-time (i.e. friends, family, and field workers), or get to know their last checked-in place, receive alerts regularly –or when they’re nearby. Example: MyFriendGPS

Enterprise Fleet Tracking and Timecarding: Allows companies to ensure the field-workers are at the intended location and keep watch on their asset. Example: WorkApp

Mapping, Travel and Point of Interest - Know your interest of things around you on your mobile device; be it – traffic local traffic and road conditions, the best nearby places, or things to do. Example: WHERE

Geo-fence Services

Geo-tagging - Uses location to provide further context to a message or picture.

Location Sharing - Know subscriber’s location if they have made it public. You can also search user’s profile and get information based on various preferences, such as gender, age, distance, interest, etc.)

Example: Foursquare

Check-in Based Contest and Games - Treat the user (usually with coupons or discounts) for traveling to shop locations and “checking in”. LBS are utilized to check that the user was at or near the retailer location when

Local Search - Enables the user to discover and search what is nearby while matching the user–specified location. Example: Poynt

Local/Hyperlocal Content - A contextual experience depending on a particular location. For mobile local search, the user's position on map and certain motive are the most important components. Examples: Local

Communications solutions are quite challenging and complex, and service providers must provide far more advanced services to the market while keeping customers dedicated and insulated from the difficulties behind the solutions. To be able to achieve this, providers require strategic associates who can do more. Softweb offers a range of seamless and highly targeted, solutions that are incorporated with partners and provided successfully. Softweb systems and solutions are amenable and resourceful, allowing clients to create or customize value-added services. Our competencies make the expertise available to build, deploy, test, and support the most complex service launches. With technologies, services, and solutions, Softweb Solutions is at the forefront of developing the future of location

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