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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.

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