Location is Better than Mobile TV

location based services


by Russell Buckley on October 19th, 2006 in Location Based Services
So, sometimes I’m wrong (not very wrong actually) and sometimes stuff I’ve been saying for ages (long before anyone else) seems to be coming true.
A couple of themes I’ve been writing about over the years is that Location Based Services, if done right, are a winner and that mobile TV is a bit of a dog - certainly in the short term. Sure, I think video clips will be big, especially User Generated, but TV on the mobile doesn’t yet have mass appeal.
And then along comes a survey from In-Stat that says pretty much the same thing.
1,000 early adopters and business people were interviewed and while 15% expressed strong interest in Mobile TV, 53% wanted their phone to help them find their way around and find local services, like restaurants.
Now the caveat here is that business people aren’t going to be Digital Natives, using Rupert Murdoch’s expression, but Digital Immigrants. So what they say they want, might be very different from a 20 year old who was practically born with a mobile in their hand and who can use one in pitch black with her hand behind her back.
Having said that, I think these Digital Natives will still prefer LBS over Mobile TV, albeit on the basis of using LBS in different ways. Services like Loopt are clear winners to this new generation, provided they can overcome the challenge of working with operators/carriers.
Obviously, for this type of navigation to work usefully, it has to be superfast, which is a technical challenge. But I’m still holding out that LBS will be up there with voice, messaging, audio/video player, video/camera and web browsing in the suite of most frequently used tools in the mobile phone of tomorrow.
Anyone think I’ve missed anything in that list?

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3 Responses to “Location is Better than Mobile TV”
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1 Peter Cranstone Oct 19th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Why do you need to work with the carriers?
We’re already able to transmit location based information from a mobile phone to any web server on the planet. (We can use area code, zip code or real time GPS data). The carriers don’t need to be included in the loop.
Check out the picture at this link: http://www.5o9inc.com/Business.html it clearly shows real time “location” information with regard to buying a bottle of water and getting a mobile coupon.
Doing local restaurants and local search is a no brainer with this capability.
With regard to “it has to be superfast” - how about “real time”.
Cheers.
Peter
2 reno marioni Oct 19th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Hi Russell,
I know that you have/are consulting for Loopt and that is great but I’d suggest rounding out the article listed a small cadre of cool emerging companies also making a go at this area. It would make you post seem less biased to include others, I think (worht mentioning a caveat). But, I agree LBS has a lot of potential and some pitfalls as well if not done right. Will Mobile TV be the fad of 2006 like podcasting was last year?
My 0.0000002 cents
RenoPointr.comstill stealth mode
3 Jakob Wästberg Oct 20th, 2006 at 12:04 am
For most parts I agree with you, but I think it’s importnat not to look at LBS as a killer app “that will change everything”.Alot of the LBS services that comes out, and has been over the last years have faded fast. TomTom (the dutch GPS company) has a Buddies function that works over GPRS, There were some positions based mobile games a few years back, but I think the interesting parts of LBS is when the postioning is commoditized and any service can utilize it, then there can be services for natives, immigrants and even those that are trying to emmigrate:-)When it comes to mobile TV I am sure that it will have to be part of a change from Scheduled viewing to a mix of ondemand broadcasting and ofcourse live events, olympics or similar.