Mobile Phones and GPS - Does it add value?
This time last year I stumbled across a report from Deloitte, a consulting firm, with telecommunication predictions for 2007, they painted a big roll for location based services (LBS) in driving the mobile industry forward – they were right.
March 2007 saw the release on the GPS enabled Nokia N95, assisted GPS followed shortly after. August saw a national campaign from Vodafone advertising location based services from UK property website Rightmove, and traffic updates from the AA. If in any doubt of the impact LBS would have on the mobile industry in 2007, October saw Nokia stump up $8 billion for mapping data provider Navteq; and only last week, news broke of a location enabled Apple iPhone.
The 2008 report strikes a more bearish note for LBS, at least with regards to GPS enabled mobile phones. Deloitte acknowledge that the convergence of successful technologies in their own right, doesn’t always add value to the converged device…just because we can GPS enable mobile phones, does it add value?
I have sympathy with this view point, and recall with anxiety, last weeks news from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) of the MP3 enabled Stun Gun:
Yep, you can sing along to your favourite tracks while shooting anyone who causes you distress with a 50,000 volt electric charge. What would your song be?
The 2008 Deloitte report can be found here: Deloitte Telecommunications Predictions 2008.
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