FEATURE LOCATION BASED SERVICES
to realise that vision. In August, for example, to a few devices—but this is growing, mainly
it had mentioned that it was already working through Nokia’s flagship offerings. In Japan,
with Navteq on traffic information. KDDI has attributed its gain in new subscrib-
Nokia has also said recently that the ers to EasyNaviWalk, a personal navigation
early take-up of the mapping and naviga- application that tracks an individual’s move-
tion service it makes available to N95 users ments through A-GPS LBS. NTT DoCoMo also
is very encouraging. One hundred per cent has a LBS package, called Location Platform,
of N95 users have used the Nokia Maps ap- which is designed for use in conjunction with
plication, the firm says, and over 20 per cent i-mode handsets and is targeted at corporate
have subscribed to the navigation service. as well as general users.
Since launch there have been over 1.5 million A-GPS has already made significant inroads
downloads of both Nokia Map loader and in the CDMA world, led by the North American
the Nokia Maps application from the firm’s market, where it is cheaper to integrate into
website. Which rather suggests that there phones. But in the predominantly GSM market
is some justification for Nokia’s decision to of Europe, it has been held back by the fact
accelerate its implementation. that there are fewer GPS-enabled GSM phones
However, since Nokia didn’t need to spend available in the market.
$8bn to achieve its mapping success story, Today, while A-GPS is believed to be on
Garner reckons there is a defensive angle to the agenda of most major European carriers,
the acquisition. Prior to the purchase Nokia none has fixed any dates for its introduction.
was dual-sourcing maps from Navteq and So, it will take several years for the handsets
TeleAtlas. When the TeleAtlas acquisition by to gather critical mass enough to provide a
TomTom was announced earlier this year, strong business case for building applications
there were strong rumours that Navteq dependent on location.
was a target for companies such as Google, It will probably be several Cost is prohibitive and GPS is today restricted
Yahoo and possibly Microsoft. For Nokia,
the risk of having both of its map suppli-
years before location-
mostly to high-end phones. It will take longer to
filter down into mid-tier or low-end phones un-
ers owned by competitors would not have
determining handsets are
less GPS is found to be a viable revenue earner. It
been attractive. has been suggested that GPS can be added onto
“Interestingly, this may also be a way for
available widely enough
the SIM card, but some analysts argue that it’s
Nokia to strengthen its presence in the US
market. But this is a large acquisition and
to occupy a significant
unclear how this would work given how deeply
the SIM is housed in the handset.
it leaves Nokia’s internet services portfolio
rather unbalanced. We are sure that there are
proportion of the market
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has long been cynical
about the mass-market potential of A-GPS
plenty of Nokia executives who would love to and a poll of Japanese mobile users by the
have an injection of $8bn for expanding their handset vendor moving into the applications operator showed that, although 18 per cent
area,” says Garner. “Nokia will soon need to let space and spending a princely $8bn is a fairly possess an A-GPS-enabled phone, 80 per cent
the market know whether this is a one-off, or positive sign that there is longevity in LBS. did not see much need for the positioning
whether it signals a general acceleration of Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean all the technology.
the internet strategy with additional sizeable barriers to uptake have been removed. In fact, That said, DoCoMo appears happy with
acquisitions to follow.” all the age-old hurdles still exist in one form LBS uptake. Shinya Yokota, a spokesperson
Nokia spokesperson Steven Knuff presents or another. However, at least Nokia is in a good for the Japanese number one carrier, told
his thoughts on why Nokia thinks it can position to solve one of those barriers: the low MCI: “We offer two types of LBS to our cus-
make a better fist of LBS than the carriers: penetration of GPS-enabled handsets. tomers; one based on network technology
“The one thing that we can bring to the table Commercial deployment of location-ena- and one based on GPS. In 2001, we launched
that the operators can’t is a global reach. An bled handsets has been patchy thus far. “In the “i-area” service as our first LBS, which
operator might have a certain region covered the US, the FCC mandated that 95 per cent of is based on the information from the base
or a certain country covered. But we have a mobile phones that dial 911 must be located station, while our flagship models have
global presence. So we can get these services through the mobile operator’s E911 service supported GPS functions since 2006. i-area
out to global sources and push them out to by the end of 2005. However, owing to cost has seven million unique users per month
global users. The sheer size and the amount limitations, a number of US operators have on average and “Imadoko Search”, a paid,
of coverage that we have with our devices and not hit this target and have accepted the fine GPS-based LBS had 480,000 subscribes as
our presence is a good reason to think that imposed as it is cheaper than rolling out the of the end of August 2007.”
we have a shot in this area.” devices,” says Informa Telecoms & Media According to Informa’s McQueen, outside of
Nokia’s Navteq acquisition is, without principal analyst David McQueen. some key markets, it will probably be several
doubt, the biggest news story in the LBS In Western Europe, rollout of location-ena- years before location-determining handsets
space for some time. The world’s number one bled handsets has, so far, largely been limited are available widely enough to occupy a »
40 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48