Competition in the LBS Market: "A bare knuckles brawl"

location based services

A bare knuckles brawl," is how Joe Astroth, vice president of Autodesk Location Services described the competition for location-based services (LBS) platform tools and services. But his division at Autodesk is winning business as it did just recently in securing Disney Mobile as a customer for its LocationLogic platform. Disney Mobile will begin to offer services in June 2006 and will operate as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) by licensing frequency spectrum from Sprint.When asked why cellular operators have more recently started to launch LBS applications, Astroth said, "Carriers run in a herd." But he offered other reasons why the LBS marketplace is heating up. "In LBS, handsets had to be there, and it took a long time; graphics had to be appealing; keyboards and text entry had to get better...bigger than that is ubiquitous broadband," said Astroth. He mention that just as growth in the internet was the result of getting beyond the 56K download speeds, the same inflection point is occuring with LBS in that broadband availability can now support many LBS applications. In addition, Astroth feels there is a deeper understanding about location-smart devices that is creating consumer demand.And Astroth confirmed that there is no truth to the rumor that Autodesk Location Services is going away anytime soon.