{"id":1122,"date":"2010-04-21T07:38:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T15:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2010-04-21T07:38:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T15:38:23","slug":"technology-huge-growth-in-location-based-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/technology-huge-growth-in-location-based-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: Huge Growth in Location Based Services"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Location Based Services (LBS) market is growing quickly. \u00a0One report expects the market segment in the US to grow 43.1 percent <\/a>over the period from 2008-2012. \u00a0That number actually seems low when you think about the possibilities of LBS applications. \u00a0In fact, \u00a0Juniper Research<\/a> says that the LBS market will top $12 billion by 2014.<\/p>\n

LBS combines mobile handset technology with GPS location information. \u00a0Because increasingly more handsets are GPS enabled, this segment is really beginning to take off. \u00a0LBS applications typically are information and entertainment solutions. \u00a0Based on your current location, LBS applications are able to search and find specific types of information. \u00a0Examples might include finding \u00a0information on the nearest stores, businesses or restaurants. \u00a0Applications could provide walking or driving directions, historical information about the area where you are, or social information via message and photo tags associated with your location that were left by others.<\/div>\n
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Google has jumped aboard. \u00a0 Everyone is familiar with Google maps. \u00a0But Google also offers the mobile application Latitude<\/a>, a PC or mobile app that let’s you see on a map where your friends are. \u00a0Twitter and Google Buzz<\/a> support geo-tagging your message with location information. \u00a0Google has also recently been awarded a patent<\/a> on the concept of serving up ads to mobile users based on their current location.<\/div>\n
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Consumer-based geo-location applications are popping up everywhere. \u00a0These include services like foursquare<\/a>, gowalla<\/a>, Loopt<\/a>, and Rummble<\/a>. \u00a0Incumbent social media players like Facebook, LinkedIn and Yelp are scrambling to ad LBS features.<\/div>\n
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It will be interesting to see if LBS grows a counterpart in business applications too. \u00a0Businesses already are familiar with location-based application involving RFID and GPS for logistics operations. \u00a0But in those applications things rather than people are being tracked. \u00a0It might be an interesting add-on to a CRM system that shows a sales rep visiting a customer, or to see where your team members currently are, or to see the location of attendees to a webinar. \u00a0 On it’s own, LBS doesn’t seem rich enough to survive as a standalone application, but as a feature, it seems to be a useful add-on.<\/div>\n
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The Location Based Services (LBS) market is growing quickly. \u00a0One report expects the market segment in the US to grow 43.1 percent over the period from 2008-2012. \u00a0That number actually seems low when you think about the possibilities of LBS…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[43,45,46],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-gps","tag-lbs","tag-location"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}