Dominique Bonte at ABI says we can expect to see huge increases in revenues from Carriers purchasing LBS infrastructure upgrades, namely around OMA-SUPL standards-compliant platforms that leverage GPS chipset commodities in handsets.  The specific number is $2.2B by 2013.   Dominique's work in the area of Outdoor GPS is conservative and therefore what I consider honest and good, so I respect what he has to say, but I'm having a hard time swallowing this pill.

The first wave of Carrier LBS infrastructure deployments lasted about 3 years between 1999 and 2001, and after that brief time when MPCs and GMLCs were purchased as standalone pieces of monolithic SS7 equipment, larger infrastructure players such as Ericsson and Nokia started giving the stuff away with network upgrades, destroying business models overnight for those focused on selling standalone LBS gear.  Today, everything is IP-based with SUPL, and that means no more fork lifting redundancies of monstrous fault-tolerant servers, but rather installing IT-grade inexpensive racks that handle TCP/IP traffic.  The software that runs on it is equally IT-grade and should only command the same inexpensive price tag.  So, where will the billions come from?

Despite being the most popular and successful North American LBS application to date, generating a significant percentage of total LBS revenues, other opportunities exist beyond navigation, namely with location-enriched communications that leverage the inherent immediacy and presence power of the mobile network. T-Mobile US understands this...

While GPS enables traffic and navigation services, the core of the T-Mobile brand is about connecting our customers to the people who matter most.

TMo wants to

define and create experiences that enhance personal relationships and enrich all forms of personal communications, while also contributing to the value proposition of My Faves.

With the iPhone and Android there's a lot of focus now on location as an autonomous function and capability of the device, rendering the network to an irrelevant bit-pipe that has no role in the L part of LBS. That's certainly true for local search, navigation, publishing, and other device-centric Web applications, but TMo evidently knows that SIP-based immediacy in the network can be used in a way to add the "L" relevance back into the mix. Well done on them and werd up to my homey Tim Dunn.

1. TrailRunner
2. PublicEarth
3. G-Park
4. meetnowlive
5. wenear

 Personally, I don't care which company Google licenses its mapping data from, as long as it is accurate. 

-Eric Zeman, Information Week

When asked about implications of the Google deal with regards to Navigation on the iPhone...

We are making sure that navigation is an application that is allowed.  If there is any restriction on the platform, that indeed has to do with the restrictions that we have in our contracts. Navigation is allowed, provided that the right fees are paid

- Alain De Taeye, Founder, Tele Atlas

Yesterday's news of Berlin-based Plazes getting consumed by Nokia was overshadowed today with news from a London press conference that Nokia will acquire the remaining 52% of Symbian it didn't already own for $410M.  They then plan to follow the Android and LiMo for-free model, and offer Symbian as an open source mobile OS under the consortia management of the newly formed Symbian Foundation.  Initial foundation members include AT&T, Broadcom, DoCoMo, Ericsson, Freescale, LG Electronics, Motorola, Orange, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.  

With Symbian commanding 60% market share in the mobile OS smartphone space today, the move sends clear a message to Apple and Google...  Nokia is in the fight for mindshare with developers and users in what I think we'll reminisce on 5 years from now as the true beginning of the mobile Web era.  

...is the sentiment from Stefan Constantinescu at IntoMobile on the arrival of the 3G iPhone.  Like Stephan, I was equally disappointed and had guessed Apple might break the rules again, but this time with a game-changing move to evolve beyond archaic device subsidy business models.  That doesn't appear like it's going to happen, so as a result, expect more lockdown and control over what you can see, and what you can use. 

One of the things we (meaning the LBS community) talked about in the early days of 911, was using call log histories to improve wireless coverage.  The idea is simple.  Take identity-ridden, non-intrusive logged caller locations (which include signal strengths) and create an interpolated GIS model to then isolate under served areas denoted by weak signals in a continuous field- red being strong, yellow being weak.  We saw this GIS modeling work as an opportunity to replace expensive drive-by systems used at the time by mobile operators to improve their coverage and optimize service.  While the idea was noble, it never took.  All the carriers we worked with just let the data hit floor and it was swept away into dust bins or saved only for odd court-issued subpoenas.  What a waste.

Since then, lots of folks have caught on to the idea that anonymous logged mobile locations in any transaction context can be used for all sorts of modeling and new data creation.  From traffic models to isolating target-rich advertising zones, modeling based on post-transaction analytics and business intelligence is the new trick of the Google era. 

Researchers at Northeastern University are with it (I think most around the world are.  City University in London was doing this in the late 90s).  Northeastern recently used 100,000 anonymous mobile locations to map social patterns of geographic interaction.  No surprise - we humans are for the most part sedentary creatures, staying within 20 miles of our homes (begs the question why we need TomTom's!).  Researchers hope to extend the data findings into epidemiological analyses and use it in a similar context to John Snow's famous cholera outbreak analysis map of central London produced in 1854.  It's good to see this advanced GIS work finally happening with LBS...

1. Motorola's mobile unit is for sale
2. Garmin needs a big wireless play
   
3. Both are mid-west American companies
4. Both have market shares strongest in the US
5. Both have Magnificent Mile stores/direct-to-consumer strategies
   
6. Both share Nokia as an adversary
7. Both share Apple as an adversary
   
8. Garmin's offline, dedicated GPS business future is bleak
9. Motorola offers connectivity and carrier relationships that Garmin needs
   
10. Garmin's Nuviphone is not an experiment, like Garmin Mobile was

Google's My Location works better than an MPC/GMLC in terms of responsiveness and performance. I'm still not exactly sure how it works (Google won't tell me), but had a hunch it was a crowdsourced database of published information from millions of mobile users unknowingly volunteering to the system through Google Maps usage. Ted Morgan's comment on that theory, however, made me second guess these assumptions. With Skyhook already investing heavily in mapping wifi access points with drive-by-surveys, why not capture the cell side of the wireless airwaves? Consider this snippet from the Geolocation API description (yes, there's an API coming from Google...)

Many devices do not have native access to GPS or other location data. Additionally, GPS can take a long time to get an accurate location fix, drains battery, and does not work indoors. Because of these problems, the location API also has the ability to send various signals that the devices has access to (nearby cell sites, wifi nodes, etc) to a third-party location service provider, who can resolve the signals into a location estimate.

It's the third-party location service provider reference that's interesting – in addition to Ted’s comments…

I didn't buy the first iPhone.  I would have if it allowed me to take my existing SIM and pop it in, but that wasn't an unlocked option.  The locked-in two-year at&t commitment to voluntarily imprison myself was luring for sure, but in the end I converted to a skeptical technology laggard in exchange for freedom.  Despite the lockdown I avoided, Apple has nonetheless reached the mobile masses and some industry guru's argue they've changed the mobile industry.  Certainly, convincing at&t to give up applications power and taxes in exchange for exclusivity is one win; a touch screen changed the UI paradigm; and Apple is the first company in history to get people using the Internet on a mobile device in any meaningful volume.  All of these may be leading to changes, but for the most part, the US mobile market is still in the third world of development when it comes to consumer wireless freedom-of-choice. 

Here's a what if scenario though...  The 3G iPhone is due June 9.  What if Apple somehow works their magic and sells it as an unlocked, unsubsidized device in addition to carrier-subsidized options?   Would you pay the freedom premium?  I would.  And I imagine millions of others would as well.  And that would fix the US mobile market because consumer purchasing patterns would change through growing knowledge that mobile devices and their applications are available to purchase from alternative retailers and lifestyle points of sale beyond limited carrier shelf-spaces.   That would change everything, for everyone...