LOCATION BASED SERVICES

Navigation and tracking are practical services that will be highly valued by users, in that all these same services can also be linked to advertising and commerce to provide, for example, directions to the nearest Italian restaurant, or to a store with current sales promotions.

Location-based services will offer value to applications that benefit from geographically filtered information. These applications can eliminate the effort required to locate or request data by first determining what data might be relevant to the user’s location. Knowing that I am currently in a mall would be useful if I am searching for listings of shoe stores— the application can first serve up those shoe stores that are located in the mall before offering those that are across town.

Key drivers for location-based service applications are:

• Ability to filter content based on geographic relevance. Information, places, or listings of events that are close to a user’s current location. Special information can be in the form of alerts to hazards or situations that can impact the end user.

• Ability to identify and transmit location. When users are lost or otherwise unable to communicate, such as after an accident or injury.

• Community-building possibilities. Applications that utilize the end user’s location to match them with others interested in the same activity or event including dating, finding sports activity partners, and the like.

TARGETED ADVERTISING. Targeted advertising is the customizing and individual tracking of advertising to the specific recipient of the advertisement. Wireless Internet systems can customize, deliver, and track multimedia advertising to specific groups of individuals.

Advertising is traditionally associated with the promotion of branded goods and services. Because of the intolerance issues of users in the wireless environment such as paying for incoming calls and airtime privacy invasion, advertising should be positioned differently with different associations. Advertising over wireless should be linked to content, location, and e-commerce, which will enable advertising to be positioned as a useful service.

ENTERPRISE LOGISTICS. Wireless networks offer the ability to track the position of mobile phones (within a limited distance) and provide information services based on the determination of the location. Navigation and tracking service are highly valued by users in key market sectors such as truck dispatch management and public vehicle management (e.g., buses).