Skip to main content

The next wave of mobile location-based services

What do the next few years hold for mobile location-based services?  The answer is: Lots of innovative features that can help people in their every-day lives.

In March Grizzly Analytics subscribers learned about a new trend: Location-based reminders.  The idea of location-based reminders started years ago, with Nokia's research on what they called location-based triggers. But in March we saw research by Palm (HP) in this area, and that led us to take a look at R&D by EBay, Microsoft and others, and also 3rd-party apps that implement location-based wake-up alarms for bus and train riders.

As we all know, Apple introduced location-based reminders in iOS5 in June, validating the trend and giving it a huge Apple-shaped push.

So what's next?  Lots of great things: Calendar navigation, location-based playlists and song selection (like playing the theme from Rocky when you run uphill), location-based phone settings (like switching to vibrate when you walk into a theater), indoor navigation (even when GPS doesn't work), learning what you like to do in different places, and lots more.  Research in these areas is underway by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, RIM, Nokia, Palm, Motorola and many more.

Learn more in Grizzly Analytics report on Mobile Location-Based Services 2012-2015.  Or e-mail info@grizzlyanalytics.com.

Popular posts from this blog

Finding indoor location tech, and fans, at MWC 2017

Over 100,000 people are now planning to attend the 2017 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, in February. Many will flock to the newest devices, many to the keynote speeches from market leaders, and many to the latest tech from a huge variety of exhibitors. But how does anyone find all the tech they want to see? Anyone who has been to MWC in the past will tell you that there is no way to be sure you're seeing all that you want to see. Anyone interested in indoor location technology now has a solution. The Grizzly Analytics Guide to Indoor Location Technology at MWC2017 will list all the companies at MWC that are demonstrating, presenting or talking about indoor location tech. (Obviously we may miss one, but since we've reported on indoor location tech from over 200 companies , we expect to be fairly comprehensive.) The guide will be organized by technology type and also by MWC hall number, so you can plan your time accordingly. If you are exhibiting i...
Read more

The year indoor location will truly take off

For years I've been writing sentences like "this will be the year that indoor location will explode into the market." I, and many others, have been expecting indoor location technology to enable the huge range of location-enabled apps, which currently work only outside where GPS signals are available, to work inside. But until now the promise of indoor location has remained a promise. But if we look at the reasons for this, we'll see that it is about to change. 2017 and 2018 are poised to be the years that the challenges keeping indoor location from going mainstream will be solved. First is accuracy. Most indoor location technologies until a year or so ago had accuracy in the range of 4 to 8 meters. This sounds good in principle, and in fact is better than GPS in many cases. But GPS systems are able to use road details to hide their inaccuracies, so that the blue dot seems to follow your driving car almost perfectly. But indoors, this sort of inaccuracy means y...
Read more

Indoor Location, GeoFencing and Retail (Updated w/ video)

We've written a lot about indoor location technology , which is bringing location services indoors where GPS doesn't work. And we've written more recently about GeoFencing , a new location technology that enables smartphones to display content or take other actions when entering a specified area. And a few weeks ago we wrote about a company that was bringing the two together . Now Aisle411 has entered the ring, adding GeoFencing to their indoor solution . And they're bringing GeoFencing to life in the retail store industry . Aisle411's solution lets you navigate your way around a store to find specific products on the shelves. You can even enter your whole shopping list, or the items you need for a recipe, and the app will guide you around the store to buy everything you need quickly.   And here's where the GeoFencing comes in:  As you near certain products, you'll get offers for related products on your smartphone screen. They might be as s...
Read more