I got a call late Friday night from a buddy in Manhattan asking if I'd heard the $160M finance round rumor for location-based social software start-up, and Sequoia venture-backed Loopt . After digging a bit more, the $160M number is wrong. In fact, Loopt's valuation is more likely close to $175M per a recent SEC filing according to sources close to the Stanford dorm-room company.

Following an additional weekend call with an application provider Loopt previously considered acquiring, I learned Loopt has surpassed 100K subscribers [all on Boost Mobile, with Sprint coming online soon]; a fraction of the existing Boost subscribers are paying customers [typical, considering Boost's pre-pay penny-strapped demographic]. Compare this accomplishment to an approximate 5% penetration rate for Verizon Wireless' subscribers using VZ Navigator, while tacking on a $9.95 MRC per sub for 3.5 million subs, and any reasonable mind would wonder how Loopt has bloated this valuation. Moreover, it's beyond most why Valley investors or potential suitors would pump out $175M into a company that sells a mobile social software for a $3 MRC, distributed exclusively through on-deck Carrier offerings.  It is not because there's a promising future in selling social software downloads on Carrier decks, especially considering individual Carriers are reluctant to support locator applications distributed by archenemies.  Furthermore, interoperable US mobile social wares augmented with Carrier-produced Location are simply too challenged due to a cross-carrier resistance to share Location openly across competing networks. Even if interoperable Location were possible in the near term similar to SMS and MMS transaction traffic traversing networks thanks to aggregator's like Verisign, there's still the challenge of charging for social software's. Users accustomed to using Web-based social wares simply won't adopt a pay-for mobile alternative in masses.

So perhaps Loopt's buy-in tact for this amount of cash is to play into the Facebook phenomenon and milk the investor influx headed this way already. There's no question social software's are hot; Facebook's $10B valuation is proof. With 43M sets of eyeballs it's no wonder why.  Sponsors are salivating over the opportunity to advertise to them all.  But Loopt doesn't have a Facebook 'for-free' support model yet, nor do they have millions of eyeballs.  So despite aspiring to become the de facto mobile social software provider with the competitive advantage via a mobile Location aggregation service and broker for all five US Carriers plus a few MVNOs, Carriers [namely the Bells] aren't going give this stuff away yet in an ad-subsidized model or cooperate with each other for that matter.  ...Perhaps Loopt's hopes of a hard-earned $175M might best be secured through the Web—a player with the means, will, planned transport, and a GPS handset to bypass Carrier resistance. Is there someone like that out there? If Dodgeball's debacle is any evidence, I'm skeptical, but wish the outfit my best nonetheless...

With the snowboarding season approaching in Colorado, I heard the mountain communities were expecting another dusting tonight, so I visited The Weather Channel to check out the 10-day forecast and discovered a super-cool new 3D mapping feature powered by ski.com.   This is exactly the kind of interactive visualization I wish my Snowboarding Moblog supported.  Until then, Google Earth will suffice...  

While hanging out with the brightest-of-the-brightest GSM telecom-world analysts in Lake Las Vegas this week, I noticed there weren't any 20-or-30-something publishers, developers, entrepreneurs, or Web 2.0 think-tank advocates mingling among the crowd of vendors and carriers at the 2007 3G Americas Analyst Forum. I'm sure your perspectives are welcome (and needed) though—the analysts here are acutely aware of your existence, and while you might think the network operators aren’t, here's a few notable quotes to prove otherwise...

When questioned on the impact of Skype, and other disruptive Web forces challenging the GSM Telecom regime (of which T-Mobile and AT&T belong) over Mobility...

There's a big difference between the Internet-over-Wireless and the Wireless-Internet

-Neville Ray, SVP, T-Mobile

Translation… Mr. Ray has no intention of becoming an open access bit pipe. His users will see and use what he wants them to see and use. The media-shoved-down-your-face broadcasting mentality is alive, strong, and well at the upper echelons of Seattle T-Mobile brass.

The second notable quote…

I'm curious what the panels’ perspective is on Google becoming a network operator?

-Tole Hart, Gartner

The answer? None—not a single solitary word. Not even an “ahem” to clear a throat. A dead, deafening serious silence overtook the auditorium as I watched mature bodies and their language not even nudge poker-faces to indicate nothing. Lacking even the slightest red inclination to perspire, these seasoned corporate veteran suits might chose corporate death over any inkling of exposure revealing a soft under-belly denial that the 700 Mhz Google threat is indeed real and feared. When further provoked to provide comment following auditorium-wide laughter over the silence, and after not one soul took the plunge to dare share insight, G3 Americas President Chris Pearson and panelist chair said:

The FCC and Kevin Martin have not yet fully resolved the details of the proposed open access conditions.

I was contemplating the future today [...I know, very dangerous], and tried Google Trends to capture historical global Web Search trends for personal navigation devices and map data, limiting my search keywords to Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, Mio, NAVTEQ, and Tele Atlas.

General deviations include traffic spikes during the holiday purchasing season, plus two notable anomalies for TomTom. The first coincides with the release of Google Earth and Maps in the summer of 2005 [most agree this time marked the beginning of explosive mainstream awareness in mapping].  The second arrives a month ago when TomTom announced their intentions to acquire Tele Atlas [reflected equally in the NAVTEQ-Tele Atlas comparison chart].  Other interesting trends include Magellan's relative flat traffic [which could indicate a well established brand], and Mio's domination in the news pointing to their aggressive marketing. One last observation... I conducted the analysis for all countries served by Google.  When limiting the analysis to the US, Garmin inched above TomTom, while the NAVTEQ-Tele Atlas numbers remained steady.

Vodafone Australia is now offering a free, promotional Blackberry 8310 navigation service for one year if users register by December 1, 2007, with future plans to fully subsidized the application with business-sponsored local advertising.  White labeled by Yapp Mobile [with backend GIS support provided by MapInfo!], Vodafone Compass offers all the basic bells and whistles found in other pay-for navigation applications.  Thanks for the shakeup mates! 

Following last weeks White House statement accepting the USAF proposal to further disable selective availability in all next generation GPS Satellites, proponents of the European Galileo spoke up crying foul apparently because the announcement arrived one day before the EC's new plan. 

The Americans also hope to eliminate Galileo, claims Lieven Quoidbach, vice-president of NAVTEQ, the US satellite mapping company. They are desperate to keep their monopoly. It is kindergarten behaviour, he said. 

Last time I checked, orbiting real estate was still available for anyone with the means to claim it.  Eliminating SA, which was already non-existent, doesn't change that.

Galileo, already troubled by internal EU feuding on how it would be funded, suddenly had one less reason to exist.

-MSNBC

Skydeck's Jason Devitt [former CEO of Vindigo ,and launcher of the original MapQuest Mobile pre-API days] testified on the Hill last July 11 for open mobile networks.  He's also blogging up a wireless industry issues storm, voicing rant near and dear to most developers, innovators, artists, and entrepreneurs.   

To my knowledge, there are 94 commercially deployed US mobile LBS applications spanning both consumer and business market segments.  Four years ago, there were about a dozen.  While the market now supports many options for Navigation, Social Networking, Search & Merchandising, Fitness, Locators, Infotainment, and a diversity of business mobility solutions for any professional palette across industry verticals, a cursory review of GIS market share conditions across these categories reveals the proverbial paradigm shift has not yet occurred –where’s the de facto GIS Gorilla needed for market stabilization?  

...Even if Apple sold all existing iPhone inventory, penetration would still only account for 1% of the worlds total mobile device shipments.  So while reports indicate Apple has selected Broadcom/GL as their 3G supplier for connectivity and GPS silicon for the next US iPhone release, which reads big across our location technology ecosystem, look for Broadcom's larger impact to go noticed when Nokia starts their 3G global market GPS invasion.

-The Street 

Perhaps the Microsoft Virtual Earth team is too busy these days with 3D data build-out and GIS infrastructure opportunities to care too much about mobile.  Despite spending upwards of 800 million on TellMe, which would suggest mobile local Search is a priority for Redmond, the latest commercial Live Search offering with Sprint A-GPS still uses TellMe's pre-Microsoft deCarta mapping service. 

-Gizmodo