Actual take-up of in-handset GPS is around 80 %
Rating: There’s got to be more to premium content than speed cameras
An interesting roundtable discussion today with Telmap, RIM and Vodafone. Everyone agrees that GPS will soon start appearing in devices aimed at the consumer segment, thereby sending the whole sector into the mass market.
As Telmap’s Oren Nissim pointed out local search will be the key to success. It’s just that nobody’s sure exactly what ‘local search’ is. However, he did make an impressive claim that Verizon has just made $400 million out of location based services in one year. Which is why it doesn’t want Google muscling in on a lucrative revenue stream.
Actual usage stats that cover mobile phone users are also beginning to emerge. RIM’s Peter Heath revealed that the activation rate for GPS in its Curve 8310 and Pearl 8110 handsets is around 80 per cent, with the average use been at least three times a week.
Add to that were figures supplied by Vodafone showing that the take-up of its Sat Nav offering is rising dramatically, with an average growth of 23 per cent in the last three months.
What the market needs desperately, in my humble opinion is tigher integration of sat nav and mapping with other applications. RIM revealed, however, that the option ‘map it’ is already part of the standard contacts book in sat nav enabled phones. So if you’ve got somebody’s address, you should now be able to find them!
There was also a general feeling that sat nav and location should be opened up to user generated content. So that consumers can create their own POIs; share them with others (across Facebook, perhaps) ;and generally gain a reputation for themselves as nightclub or restaurant connoisseurs.The trouble is – as the roundtable revealed – that if you scratch the surface, there’s not much underneath. The best example of a ‘premium service’ on offer now is charging UK users for speed camera information. That’s a no brainer. What else can the sector offer, though?
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