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, expensive, fault-tolerant servers, but rather installing IT-grade inexpensive racks that handle TCP/IP and SIP traffic. The software that runs on it is equally IT-grade and should only command the same inexpensive price tag for a carrier. Compound this with the arrival of Google's Cell-ID offering beyond the command & control of wireless networks, further reducing the value of this once carrier-only information asset, and I wonder... who will pony-up the projected billions to pay infrastructure providers for what is now a commodity?

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.

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.  

Nokia's global 3G GPS invasion has begun.  According to CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo

We expect to ship about 35 million GPS-enabled Nokia devices in 2008, which is equal to the entire GPS device market in 2007.

Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an Internet company.  Companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with. Make no mistake: We are taking on these challenges seriously and aggressively.

The pending acquisition of NAVTEQ will allow us to more quickly realize the potential of combining navigation and maps with our devices. And we believe the potential here is huge. Particularly as we move from devices with simple navigation to more sophisticated location-based services, such as pedestrian navigation and targeted advertising.

We are very excited about the prospects for pedestrian navigation and other location-aware services. The market for location-based services promises to be the next big thing in mobility.  Navigation is just one of the services we are targeting. Last year, saw the launch of our Internet services brand, Ovi. Ovi is our gateway to such new services as Ovi Share, Nokia Maps, N-Gage games and the Nokia Music Store. You can expect a lot more activity here during 2008.

 -Reuters, Dow Jones

Thomas Landspurg, CTO of 8Motions and an LBS blogger, has launched opencellid, an open source project with the goal of collecting Cell-ID lat/longs and building an openmap database for developers to use freely.  Like OpenStreetMap, this service will only get better if people participate.  I applaud the effort.  It's great to see folks pressing past old in-network ways to extract location, as well as challenging new formidable ways and sources.  Don't give up!

So the long awaited results of the 700 Mhz auction are finalized finally, with Google bluffing their ante (I'm sure someone has already said this was part of their game-theorized strategy to participate all along), and with Verizon and AT&T pushing forward to win rights to build-out.  There are stories everywhere.  Some suggest the results signify a victory for Google because they get the open access conditions without the associated expenses.  Others suggest the outcome is a victory ultimately for consumers because they will receive more wireless freedom-of-choice.  Perhaps it's both, but if you look closely at the FCC rules for spectrum sale in the US along with the subsequent build-out rules, you might learn that both Verizon and AT&T have lots of time to build-out these networks, and despite strong opinions citing winners, losers, bluffers, and callers, consumers may have to wait a minimum of 4 years or maximum of 10 before using real live services.  The FCC rules for build-out state that 40 percent of the US population must be covered within four years, and 75 percent within ten years from the date of the spectrum sale.  This gives VZW and AT&T 10 years to sit on this before flicking the switch.  So, who do you think won?

...is the mantra within Nokia's beta labs according to Rueters' Tarmo Virki.  Given the company's long history and proven ability to adapt to conditions around them, it's a mantra consistent with their impressive ability to repeatedly invite discomfort once in a comfort zone and focus on different unknown directions.   I wonder how long this mantra has been around, and would guess it's a philosophy born out of Helsinki's observations of the operations within other Silicon Valley Internet powerhouses.  Bless 'em all regardless.  They get to be the kings, set up labs, pontificate, run science experiments everyday, take risks, and make mistakes without consequences.  Sounds like me college years...

By now, hopefully you've heard others voice rant against a tyrannical US wireless subscription lockdown and consumer imprisonment over device freedom and choice.  It's indeed the underlying argument for the 700Mhz movement for open access conditions.  There are other carrier-device subtleties overlooked though in the debate and movement - like device price drops - or subscription price lock-in benefits like discounted device upgrades - and other subsidies that further limit your choice and game you to sheepishly succumb and sign your freedom away for a 2 year go-to-jail sentence.  Case in point for these overlooked sentences might well be a phone manufactured by my employer, Sonim.  The device is indestructible, and for US Carriers building consumer loyalty at the expense of devices suppliers reduced to subsidies, it sucks.  Here's why.  Chances are it will last for years [3 years is in fact our warrantee] which means it's not on the same list of other plastics with a 12 month refresh rate common for most wireless users today, which in turn means it's less likely a carrier won't get upgrade subscription dollars.  That's not good - for them. They need to lock you into more contractual obligations for connectivity, and that means more newer device lure more often, which in turn diminishes value for ODMs in the process, which in turn is forcing some to move laterally through the value chain and into content, applications & services businesses, which subsequently screws up the ecosystem for content and app providers vying for a small part of the wireless wallet - all of this is a deadly disease slowly nipping away at all involved.   

So, until the promise of 700Mhz policy offers more wireless freedom-of-choice, Sonim will continue business operations overseas in more open markets because... 

...we don't expect to see it from mobile operators (in the US) - if the phone doesn't eventually break, how would they persuade people to upgrade? - but the XP1 rugged phone should be useful for mobile staff and (let's face it) pretty much anyone.

-TechWorld 

With all the hubbub around openness - open networks, open business models, open sources of software, open platforms, and lots of open mouths about them all, I've come to the conclusion this is all more about a struggle over power and establishments than technology, with the decentralized under empowered gaining the strategic advantage and setting the tempo for conflict. There are thousands of coders out there always looking for the next opensource offering that holds the promise of disintermediating the established licensor's of royalty based bliss despised by those on the opposite side of the receiving end.   And the opposite side is good, really good at what they do because it's a shared mission, with a singular objective that can't be defeated.  Google knows this, and Android is the weapon.  Dash does to, and Openmoko is theirs... uh I mean ours. 

So I agree, and because I do, here's a quick survey...  How many of you would prefer to code with MicroEmulator over Java ME tools from Sun?  Answers will be taken quite seriously, and I will include the chosen in the next version of product.       

Just because it's technically possible to do something from an engineering perspective, doesn't always mean that you should do it.  For example, TomTom's integration with Google Maps for POIs (be they expert edited or user generated) allows users to update their P-Navs with the freshest content via a save to GPS option in Google maps.  The data is then uploaded to the device via a desktop offline sync and then users are ready to go.  Sounds like the iTunes-iPod paradigm to me, and well, I think most acknowledge that works just fine for music content.  So why not maps? 

A connected PND with access to the Internet doesn't make it any better than an offline one.  In this particular argument, adding a chip to connect to the Internet means the user gets charged twice - once for the device and many many times more for the service - and that sucks.  I'll take the offline iTunes-iPod paradigm, thanks.