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

Sensor-fusion indoor location system in over 30 malls in Singapore

SingTel just deployed indoor mapping and navigation from Swedish start-up  SenionLab  in over 30 shopping malls in Singapore, with 20 more in planning, in the biggest single deployment we've seen yet of customized indoor location technology. The most significant aspect of this deployment is that this is one of the first commercial deployments of indoor location technology that uses a new technology approach called "sensor fusion," which uses sensors in smartphones (gyroscope, compass, accelerometer, ...) to track location by sensing the phone's movements. Most indoor location systems determine location by measuring the signals of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots or cellular antennas, but this risks looking choppy as the phone waits for the radio signals to change to detect the next place it is. Sensing motion using phone sensors makes the system work more smoothly, regardless of radio signal details.  (The SenionLab solution does use Wi-Fi signals as well, to compe...
Read more

Nokia indoor location positioning research shown at MWC 2012

Grizzly Analytics has been looking closely at indoor location technology, both technology research at major companies and technology solutions available to store-owners and other site managers .  At MWC we expected that indoor location would be prominent, and we weren't disappointed! We had the pleasure of seeing a large number of demonstrations of indoor positioning in action.  This is the first of several blog posts looking at these demonstrations, starting with Nokia. First I'll give some explanation, then below is a video showing Nokia's demo in action and hearing comments from their researchers. Nokia has been researching indoor location technology for years, and the technology has advanced each year but not yet reached market.  Their demo is, in a word, breathtaking, in the speed and precision at which it tracks people walking around the room.  People are seen on a computer screen or phone screen, in real-time, moving as they walk around the demo room flo...
Read more

Adding real value to smartphone camera pictures

Most technology features follow a similar path, from imitation to improvement to transformation.  First they imitate something that came before, like telephones imitating the telegraphs of yesteryear.  Then they improve on them, like phones entering individual homes. Then they transform the entire endeavor, completely surpassing the previous technology, like phones automatically connecting people without operator involvement, which enabled society to communicate in ways that telegraph users never contemplated. Cellphone cameras are following a similar path.  At the beginning cellphone cameras were imitating digital cameras, adding the convenience of carrying only one device but basically doing the same as digital cameras did.  Then they improved on them, both with quality improvements and with the ability to share pictures wirelessly without wiring the phone to a computer.  The ability to instantly share and synchronize pictures from a phone is somewhat transf...
Read more