I was an LBS hater.
LBS stands for Locations Based Services and is a catch-all for any application or service on your phone that utilizes location information. Maps, directions, and people-tracking are all examples of LBS products. For years the wireless industry has buzzed about how LBS is about to be huge; before you know it, the argument went, every kid on the block will be tracking all of their friends on their phones ushering in an entirely new way to meet up and communicate.
Companies like Webraska started up in the late 90’s focused on bringing LBS to market. The years went by but the vast consumer market never materialized. I remember using (the once and future) AT&T Wireless’ first LBS product, called “Find-A-Friend”, in 2002. It was an early product in a nascent market and the location positioning was far from perfect as the system was only able to track you to your closest cell site. In New York that might be around the corner from you, in Kansas it could be miles away. Find-a-Friend only worked on the one carrier and only on a handful of handsets so real network effects couldn’t set in. I recall wanting to try it out one night but none the people I was with were AT&T subs so we couldn’t. Even when it did work it was kind of creepy. We had a bunch of programmers using the service and I remember looking at the screen, seeing all of them together on the Lower East Side at 3am, and thinking, “tomorrow won’t be as productive as I’d hoped…”
My “believe it when I see it” attitude on LBS was shattered recently by the introduction of A-GPS devices. These are phones that use an assisted version of the standard Global Positioning System that we all know and love and there are already more A-GPS handsets in the market than you’d think (the LG Chocolate, for example.) No application is more useful or shows off A-GPS functionality better than Verizon Wireless’ VZ Navigator. It is essentially NeverLost for your phone. It offers maps, turn-by-turn directions, even a voice speaking the directions as you drive or walk. It also has a fantastic search functionality and I’ve used it to find the nearest card room in California, the nearest Starbucks in New York, restaurants, hotels, etc. My favorite use is when I’m driving or walking around and see a bridge or body of water and want to know what it is; I just turn on the phone, push a few buttons, and within seconds there I am on a map. I highly recommend this app, and in using it I’m beginning to see real utility and the beginning of a real market for LBS in general.
In-Stat just released a new survey with a surprising statistic: 53% of people surveyed “wanted their phones to tell them their location and help them find their way around.” That is an encouraging number. It doesn’t mean that these people necessarily want to map their friend’s locations or want their phones to beep with a coupon every time they pass a Burger King, but it does show an awareness and desire for the basic GPS product. And once people start using that you can see how other LBS service can start falling into place.
Having said that, I might take the In-Stat number with a grain of salt – InStat hasn’t made the underlying data publicly available so these numbers come from an interview David Chamberlain did with the Chicago Tribune. They’re put into the context of a story about how people supposedly want GPS more than mobile video and Chamberlin says that 15% of people surveyed expressed “strong interest” in mobile video vs. 53% who “wanted” GPS. It’s unclear if these are apples to apples data. Another caveat is that this is a survey of business users who likely travel and who clearly have different desires than the general consumer market. Russell Buckley takes this further to say he thinks overall LBS will beat out Mobile TV in the long-run; although I often find Russell prophetic on all things mobile I’m not sure I agree with him here. We’ve gone from streaming zero mobile video clips a month at MTVN 18 months ago to doing over two million mobile video streams a month in the US alone. Mobile video is already growing like gang-busters and large national carriers like Cingular have only just begun to market video services. There’s a high ceiling here.
But video aside, I do think mobile A-GPS and LBS are set for some serious growth in the coming year. Companies like Loopt are taking another crack at Friend Finder services and look like they’re getting it right. Networks in Motion is the company that powers the VZ Navigator app and they seem to be in growth-mode as well. The SMS market didn’t take off until there were companies created to aggregate traffic for carriers – now my buddy Brian Levin has a new start-up called Useful Networks that aggregates LBS data to make it easier for third-parties to build apps cross-network and cross-device. And even Webraska is still around and providing best-of-breed mapping and geo-location services to carriers and to smartphones.
While massive uptake of LBS may not be around the corner, the road ahead is getting clearer every day. [If you have better LBS puns to use here feel free to do so in the comments...]
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