WhereBase » Blog Archive » Wherebase - following GPS into the mainstream

This blog is about consumer GPS (Global Positioning System) and LBS (Location Based Services), with a focus on user generated GPS data.
Why GPS and LBS?
As the founder of EveryTrail, an online application that enables users to share their experiences using GPS data, photos and stories I am exposed to the GPS / LBS market every day.
Lots of very interesting things are happening in the GPS business right now, and it looks like GPS will be hitting the mainstream in the next couple of years. Hundreds of millions of people will get GPS technology into their hands, mainly in their cell phones, but also in dedicated handheld GPS devices, cameras, car navigation devices and PNDs (Personal Navigation Devices). Once location awareness is a ubiquitous feature, useful applications will naturally follow.
Why is this happening right now?
This question can best be answered by comparing the GPS market to other markets like computers and mobile phones. New technologies in their early days tend to come in the form of clunky, unreliable and expensive devices. Think for example about the pre-mainframe computers, such as the ENIAC that became operational in 1946! It cost $500,000, and was 20,000 times slower than my current laptop.
Or think about the first mobile phone you saw, perhaps in the early 1990s. It was big, the network coverage was spotty at best, and calls cost more than $2 per minute.
The level of perfection of both PCs and mobile phones is up for debate, but nobody can deny that these technologies have hit the mainstream, and that hundreds of millions of people rely on them every day.
GPS technology is going through the same cycle. The first GPS handheld devices that came to market in the late 1980s were no different than the first computers and mobile phones: clunky, unreliable and expensive. But since then, the technology has steadily improved while prices have come down.
Almost every week I run into somebody who tells me that GPS technology is too complicated and doesn’t work for them. But after they follow my suggestion and get one of the latest generation devices, they are, without exception, stunned by the improved reliability and performance.
GPS technology is approaching its “platform of productivity” phase. Instead of being clunky, unreliable and expensive, GPS devices are becoming small, useful and affordable. You can wear a GPS device as a watch, or as embedded functionality in your cell phone. It doesn’t take forever anymore to get a “location fix” and you can now actually do something useful with the result of your location awareness. For less than $5 GPS chips can be embedded in mobile phones. And simple GPS devices sell for less than $100.
This blog is dedicated to tracking and analyzing consumer GPS technology on its way to becoming mainstream and part of our daily lives.