LBS doesn't seem to have made any traction

Russell: LBS doesn't seem to have made any traction anywhere that I'm aware of. Why do you think that is? Do you see it ever happening?

LBS (Location Based Services) is a typical engineering-led technology in search of a need. The engineers involved with LBS keep refining the accuracy (there are technologies now that will pinpoint you to the exact room in a skyscraper, including the floor you are on) but the commercial success is lacking.

The main problems are around the approach to the service idea. All of the early LBS ideas are much too predictable, and with the least amount of analysis, are proven to be weak ideas at best. Take the "find me the nearest Italian restaurant" or nearest cash machine etc. Most of the time you and I are near our home or work. We know perfectly well where are the nearest restaurants (or cash machines etc).

Occasionally we visit a colleague or family friend and might need to know a restaurant, but then we are prone to ask our colleague or relative who lives or works there, who will of course know. Or we ask the hotel concierge etc. Only rarely in our daily lives do we come across the need to consider a new area and be without any guidance. This is likely to happen mostly only in traveling.

Then, apart from LBS roaming, language, technical compatibility etc concerns (ha-ha), we have the human behaviour element - if I am going to Hong Kong next month, I will tend to prepare for it BEFORE I travel. I will look at a Hong Kong map as I select my hotel, etc. I do not land in Hong Kong and find myself downtown and then think, I wonder where is a hotel, let me see if my mobile phone can locate one. It is very rare to be in those situations where a LBS service is requested by a user.

The need is to discover totally new things that were not possible before, that the mobile phone can now serve.

Two good examples. One is the hunting dog locator from Finland. For hunters there is now a service that allows the dog to be tracked on the screen of a smartphone or PDA. The service allows the hunter to listen via the microphone on the dog's collar in case the dog is barking etc. This serves a very specific niche market, but is a very powerful addition to the hunter's tools.

Another example comes from Vodafone Germany, where now LBS based allergy warnings and updates are available. So if you suffer from allergies, and the wind direction changes, or a rain spell comes in to change the pollen counts in your region, the LBS based allergy warnings will tell you how to react. These kinds of services will make sense.

In general I would say that the LBS opportunity overall has been overhyped, and the true power of the mobile phone comes much more from community and personal services. LBS is an idea pushed by the engineers, and is likely to disappoint during this decade.