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Tag: gps

  • Tracklander: the Must-Have App for Adventure Seekers

    App developers seem to have already made apps for all kinds of people. Some of these apps become an instant hit and rock the entire industry for months while others create a short-lived stir and then fade into oblivion. Tracklander is the app that's tailor-made for iPhone users with a bit of wanderlust, and it appears to be holding its own in a marketplace brimming with all sorts of apps for active travelers and adventurers.

    If you were to get a couple of days off work to relax, trekking or a road trip would be a perfect choice of recreational activity. However, a week is hardly enough time to properly plan a track. With Tracklander on your phone your entire trip planning will be taken care of and without blowing your budget. You are spared the hassle of using GPS, looking for tracks, and the like when preparing for the trip, as well as the prohibitive expenses of hiring a local guide.

    Tracklander has re-invented travel apps by offering a digital platform based on a new concept of "independent but guided" adventurers. It comes packed with a full range of unique tracks that are customizable depending on the user's preferred terrain difficulty and time at hand. Therefore, your iPhone becomes your easy yet absolutely safe guide.

    The app features a trackbook with numerous tracks in all sorts of destinations around the world for travelers to choose from; there are asphalt roads, off-road routes, mountain treks, and cities. Among these tracks are those suitable for SUV, 4X4, road car, trekking, cycling, and MTB, as well as trail, enduro, and road motorcycles. Each track has add-ons that Tracklander has included to create unique challenges graded from 1 to 5, shortcuts back to the main track if lost, escapes, days, and treats such as a waterfall, palm grove, vineyards, and beaches. Helpful features of the trackbook include photos of every upcoming junction, navigation help and area map, cultural info, and safety info.

    Thanks to Tracklander's ingenious technology, the app will work offline without the roaming hassles and frustrations of finding 3G deep in forests or atop mountains. It is able to produce its own offline maps by using Tracklander's graphical models, NASA's topographical contours lines, and OpenStreetMap. These maps are downloaded once when the iPhone user is downloading the track. You say bye bye to data connection fees when travelling abroad.

    See Tracklander in action:

    The tracks selected are the best adventure tracks in any given area. At the time Tracklander was hitting the App Store there were 33,973 miles of roads and tracks, 1,335 miles of cycle routes, and 667 miles of treks offered, which are equivalent to going around a quarter of the world, travelling from Copenhagen to Barcelona, and crossing Spain respectively.  The brave at heart can use the tracks for Morocco, Andalusia, Tuscany, and Transpirenaica while the rest can pick city-based track versions in Barcelona, Florence, and Lisbon. Even with this diversity, language is not a problem as the app supports English, Catalan, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.

    The app also has the Trip Planner, a featured functionality that enables social networking and sharing of experiences via blogs. You get to invite other Tracklander travelers and organize the trips.

    The app comes free. A number of both city and countryside tracks are also available for free. The rest of the track features vary in price depending on the area chosen and difficulty level. Generally it will cost you €2.99 for a half or full day's travel; €9.99 from one to two days; and €34.99 from six to ten days.

    Get Tracklander from the App Store. 

  • Shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA Handsets Grew 97 Percent in 2010

    According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets increased almost 97 percent in 2010 to 295 million units. Growing at a CAGR of 28.8 percent, shipments are forecasted to reach 940 million units in 2015.

    The attach rates for wireless connectivity technologies in handsets including GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN are increasing steadily as the adoption of smartphones accelerates. These connectivity technologies are already a standard feature on high-end smartphones. Adoption of GPS and WLAN will also increase rapidly in the medium- and low-end smartphone segments.

    The attach rate for WLAN connectivity in handsets reached 20 percent in 2010. Berg Insight forecasts shipments of WLAN-enabled handsets to reach 900 million in 2015. “There are numerous compelling use cases for WLAN in mobile phones, ranging from offloading data traffic from increasingly congested mobile networks to media synchronisation and hybrid navigation services”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight.

    “Hybrid navigation technologies are necessary to enable reliable positioning indoors. New multi-mode GPS receivers that also support the Russian GLONASS satellite system are already available in handsets. When using the two systems in combination, more visible satellites will increase the chance to receive sufficiently strong signals to get a fix in urban canyons,” he said.

    He added that further performance increases will come from hybrid location technologies that fuse signal measurements from multiple satellite systems, cellular networks and WLAN, together with data from various forms of sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and altimeters.

    Starting in the second half of 2011, more handsets supporting the Near Field Communication (NFC) standard for short-range wireless point-to-point communication will also become available. When deployed in mobile phones, NFC can be used for countless applications such as information exchange, electronic ticketing and mobile payments. Shipments of NFC-enabled handsets are forecasted to increase from less than two million units in 2010 to 400 million units in 2015.

  • Mobile Navigation Users Increased 57% in H1-2010 to 44 million

    According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of mobile subscribers using a turn-by-turn navigation service or application on their handset grew 57 percent from H1-2009 to H1-2010 and reached 44 million worldwide.

    The subscriber base is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33.1 percent to reach 195 million users worldwide in 2015.

    Broad availability of GPS handsets and attractive pricing are key factors for widespread adoption of mobile navigation services. In the US, where GPS handset penetration is above 70 percent, navigation services for mobile phones has already reached about 8 percent of the total mobile subscriber base. A large share of these users gets navigation as part of a service bundle together with a voice and data plan from their mobile operator.

    As a response to the launch of free navigation applications for smartphones by Nokia and Google, more and more operators worldwide are now introducing bundled navigation services to offset the cost for end users. Navigation service providers and mobile operators are also trying to monetise services by introducing various feature and content up-sells that allow users to customise navigation applications to suit their personal needs.

    “Mobile operators and service providers are now accelerating their efforts to create differentiated navigation experiences with unique local content to compete against free services”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight.

    He added that integration of navigation services with other applications to stimulate usage will become increasingly important for mobile operators that seek additional revenues from location-based advertising. Since relatively few subscribers need turn-by-turn guidance on a daily basis, complementary features such as social networking, restaurant and event guides improve stickiness.

    Related news
    Consumer LBS Market – a Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity
    Four out of Five Cell Phones to Integrate GPS by End of 2011
    Mobile Location-based Service Revenues in Europe to Reach €420 Million by 2015

  • Consumer LBS Market – a Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity

    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan , 2010 North American Consumer Location-based Services (LBS) Market – The Wireless Carrier Opportunity, finds that the wireless carrier-generated segment of the North American consumer LBS market amounted to on-deck application software revenues of approximately $718 million in 2009 and forecasts this to reach $1.58 billion in 2015.

    The consumer location-based services sector has experienced tremendous change during the past eighteen months, forcing North American wireless carriers to cope with a vastly different competitive landscape.

    According to the research group, carrier dominance in the North American consumer LBS sector, which was carefully developed during the past decade, is now being directly assaulted by smartphone application storefronts and free off-deck solutions.

    The analysts think that wireless carriers must become more creative and aggressive in leveraging their unique assets if they want to successfully carve out and keep a significant portion of this sector’s potential revenue. Powerful technology and greater customer awareness are driving the consumer LBS market and providing even more opportunities for carriers to partner with top-tier application developers and create, launch, and promote new LBS solutions.

    "In tandem with smartphone advances, carriers are making their networks and locationing capability more accessible to LBS application developers," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Industry Analyst Jeanine Sterling. "Partnerships with location aggregators, open application programming interface (API) platforms, and simpler, quicker certification reviews make it easier for LBS developers to stake a claim to the market."

    However, new monetization models and higher channel fragmentation encourage smartphone users, in particular, to bypass wireless carriers and download LBS solutions directly from the phone’s application store. The majority of location-based applications available through smartphone storefronts are free or available for a one-time fee. In such an environment, carriers will have to strategize cleverly to justify their monthly subscription model. They will also have to find ways to appeal to a smartphone user population that is quickly growing in terms of size and demands.

    According to Sterling, wireless carriers have to bring a strong marketing sensibility to the consumer LBS sector. Their gatekeeper role and control over products and partners have disappeared in the smartphone sector and has been weakened with feature phone users. Carriers need to decide where they can compete successfully in this sector.

    "Some LBS solutions – such as the kid finder services – are just an automatic and perfect fit. Other applications and capabilities may not be as obvious. To thrive in this market, carriers have to be real marketers – monitoring customer needs, identifying product voids, working with creative partners, and publicizing the distinct benefits that carriers bring to today’s mobile user," advises Sterling.

    Related articles
    Four out of Five Cell Phones to Integrate GPS by End of 2011
    Mobile Location-based Service Revenues in Europe to Reach €420 Million by 2015
    MWC 2010: Interview with Toni Klinc from Mireo

  • Four out of Five Cell Phones to Integrate GPS by End of 2011

    With cell phones increasingly becoming the nexus of the burgeoning markets for navigation and Location Based Services (LBS), the use of GPS technology in such platforms is set to explode during the coming years, according to iSuppli.

    In the fourth quarter of 2011, 79.9 percent of cell phones shipped—amounting to 318.3 million units—will incorporate GPS functionality, up from 56.1 percent in the first quarter of 2009—or 187.8 million units—iSuppli predicts.

    The research group says the adoption of GPS in mobile handsets is being driven by smart phones.

    “The smart phone is the key product driving the technology industry today—and social networking services and applications spurred by GPS-related features are critical elements in the smart phone market today,” said Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst for iSuppli.

    “This is illustrated by Google’s decision to make turn-by-turn navigation, LBS and mobile ads the central features in its bid to take on Apple in the smart phone market, and make up the central pillars of its strategy to increasingly monetize mobile search.”

    Rebello said that smartphones are taking over from Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs) as the major platform for navigation. By 2014, usage of navigation-enabled smart phones will exceed that of PNDs.

    Furthermore – he continued – the smart phone is likely to generate many innovative LBS apps in the next five years. Apple’s iPhone already has more than 6,000 LBS apps available.

    Meanwhile, both Apple and Google are focusing on mobile advertising as a key source of revenue used in association with LBS.

    Apple’s new iAd platform, part of the company’s updated iPhone OS 4 operating system, enables the embedding of advertisements into applications, allowing iPhone users to interact with the ad without leaving the app. Similarly, Google in May acquired leading mobile ad provider AdMob.

    “Nonetheless, Apple recently upped the ante in the smart phone GPS segment with the addition of a gyroscope to its latest iPhone model. Used in combination with GPS, an accelerometer, a compass and the gyroscope can be used for in indoor navigation with floor accuracy,” as the analysts claim.

    iSuppli also sees an increased penetration of embedded GPS in a range of consumer and compute electronic devices by 2014. For example, iSuppli estimates that 18 percent of laptops and 42 percent of portable handheld video game players will have embedded GPS in 2014.

    According to the research group, altogether, the boom in mobile handset navigation will benefit suppliers of GPS semiconductors such as Texas Instruments, Broadcom Corp., Infineon Technologies and CSR.

    “GPS is not the only embedded connectivity technology that will be increasingly embedded in consumer and compute electronics devices. With the ratification of the Bluetooth 4.0 standard supporting the Bluetooth Low Energy profile, iSuppli expects increased penetration of Bluetooth in wireless mice, keypads and other interface devices for the mobile and desktop market—an area that has been dominated by proprietary technologies,” said Rebello.

    Related articles
    Mobile Location-based Service Revenues in Europe to Reach €420 Million by 2015
    MWC 2010: Interview with Toni Klinc from Mireo
    What Does Nokia’s Launch of Free Navigation Mean to the Market?

  • Mobile Location-based Service Revenues in Europe to Reach €420 Million by 2015

    According to a new report from Berg Insight, mobile location-based service revenues in Europe are forecasted to grow from € 220 million in 2009 at a CAGR of 12 percent to reach € 420 million in 2015.

    The research group estimates that one third of all mobile subscribers in Europe will use some kind of location-enhanced application on a regular basis by 2015.

    Local search, navigation services and social networking are believed to become the top applications in terms of number of users. The social networking category is forecasted to experience the highest growth in the coming years.

    According to André Malm, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight, location-based services are finally on the verge of mainstream acceptance. “Increasing sales of smartphones are driving end-user awareness of mobile Internet services and applications in general. On-device application stores enable access to mobile services for a broader audience at the same time as flat-rate data plans make pricing more transparent. More and more developers are now adding location support in their applications to enhance the user experience”, he said.

    He added that integration of GPS in handsets is an important driver. “The installed base of GPS handsets in Europe has recently surpassed 15 percent of total handsets and will increase to 50 percent three years from now.”

    The report shows that the revenue model for many mobile applications in the consumer segment is shifting from premium fees to ad-funding. This is especially the case for location-based services where now also navigation services are becoming free for end-users and developers monetise their offerings through ads and various bundles.

    “However, revenues may not grow at the same rate as usage because the mobile advertising ecosystem is still nascent. It will take some years before a successful model has been established that allows advertisers to reach out to a critical mass of active users. This is especially the case for emerging location-based advertising,” as the analysts claim.

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  • MWC 2010: Interview with Toni Klinc from Mireo

    Mireo is a Croatian navigation company that was for the first time at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

    They were presenting their navigation solution “Don’t Panic”; it calculates a route of 3,000 km in less than 2 seconds and gives you directions according to landmarks which lessens the risk of getting lost and coming into a panic.

    They run on all known mobile platforms and also on PNDs, and are currently available on various countries in Easter Europe, South America, Middle East and Asia.

  • What Does Nokia’s Launch of Free Navigation Mean to the Market?

    On 21 January 2010, Nokia announced that it is to make turn-by-turn navigation free with its Ovi Maps offering. The research firm Canalys claims the move is a logical one for Nokia to take, especially in light of the recent launch of Google’s free navigation solution.

    Google’s navigation currently supports only Android devices and is confined to the United States – though Canalys expects both of these limitations to be addressed this year.

    “As Google’s free solution becomes more widely available, it will inevitably have a negative impact on consumers’ willingness to pay for navigation, making it increasingly hard for application providers to charge for their solutions. Yet Nokia’s move should be viewed less as a defensive measure and more as it going on the offensive,” state Canalys.

    “It already has the necessary assets in-house, with its own navigation software, ownership of Navteq, and a huge, growing installed base of GPS-integrated smart phones. In making its own solution free now, it has a head start over Google and any other vendor that follows in every supported market except the US, giving it time to firmly associate itself with the concept of free navigation through promotional activity.”

    Canalys’ end-user research has repeatedly shown that navigation is a feature that consumers want on their mobile phones. Being the first to make global navigation free across so wide a portfolio of devices will give Nokia handsets a true value-add and help it differentiate its products in the increasingly competitive smart phone space, according to the research group.

    Alanysts predict Nokia’s free navigation announcement will not be welcomed though by all its mobile operator partners.

    “While some are happy to endorse or support services that help encourage data consumption, many offer chargeable GPS navigation services themselves, albeit with varying success outside the US, and may well be reluctant to support a move that encourages consumers to expect navigation and other mobile content and services for free, eroding potential revenue streams,” says Canalys.

    According to the analysis, Nokia’s announcement may conceivably push more operators into partnerships with third-party navigation solution providers, where navigation is bundled with the cost of a data plan, providing their own effectively free navigation solutions with an incentive for customers to sign up to data plans, while maintaining customer ownership advantages.

    “Similarly, handset competitors may consider entering into deeper, closer relationships with selected navigation software vendors to offer their own bundled or free solutions. This would minimize Nokia’s ability to use navigation as a differentiator and enable them to also take advantage of the growing consumer appetite for, and expectation of, having free navigation available on smart phones out-of-the-box,” states Canalys.

    That it may prompt operators and some of Nokia’s competitors to pay more attention to their own navigation partner relationships.

    Canalys analysts claim the most significant impact for navigation vendors will likely be the effect that a widespread Nokia advertising campaign will have on consumers and their willingness to pay for navigation.

    "All providers will come under substantial pressure to reduce prices, and few consumers will be happy to pay the kind of prices that vendors such as TomTom or Navigon are currently able to command through application stores,” thay say.

  • Nokia to Offer Free Turn-by-Turn Navigation

    Nokia makes walk and drive navigation free on its smartphones. Starting today, the company offers a new version of Ovi Maps that includes turn-by-turn navigation with voice guidance for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries, as well as detailed maps for more than 180 countries and 6000 3D landmarks for 200 cities around the world.

    The important news is that there is no network connection required when navigating: earlier pre-loaded on to the phone, the maps also work in offline mode, which means users don’t have to be worried about international roaming costs when traveling. That should also extend battery life.

    This game-changing move has the potential to nearly double the size of the current mobile navigation market and makes Nokia the only company with a mobile navigation service for both drivers and pedestrians that works across the world.

    "Why have multiple devices that work that work in only one country or region? Put it all together, make it free, make it global and you almost double the potential size of the mobile navigation market," explained Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President at Nokia.

    "The large-scale availability of free-of-charge mobile phone navigation offerings using high-quality map data will be a game changer for the navigation industry," said Thilo Koslowski, Vice President Automotive and Vehicle ICT at Gartner.

    "Such offerings will accelerate mass market adoption for navigation solutions and shift innovation focus to location-based services that go beyond traditional routing benefits."

    For Nokia, removing the costs associated with navigation for drivers and pedestrians allows the company to quickly activate a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services.

    Nokia says this is part of its strategy to lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services. The move is also in line with Nokia’s vision that the next wave of growth will be centered on the location-aware, social internet — as the ‘where’ people are doing things becomes as important as the ‘what’ they are doing.

    According to research firm Canalys, the number of people worldwide using GPS navigation on their mobile phones was approximately 27 million at the end of 2009. With this announcement Nokia potentially grows the size of this installed user base to about 50 million by enabling smartphone owners, with compatible devices and devices that will be made compatible shortly to activate free drive and walk navigation through a simple download of the new Ovi Maps.

    Nokia will further grow this base as it adds more smartphones to the compatible devices list.

    Canalys also estimated in 2009 that the installed base of smartphones with integrated GPS was 163 million units worldwide, of which Nokia accounted for more than half (51%) having shipped cumulatively 83 million GPS devices.

    "By adding cameras at no extra cost to our phones we quickly became the biggest camera manufacturer in the world. The aim of the new Ovi Maps is to enable us to do the same for navigation," adds Vanjoki.

    Ovi Maps is immediately available for download for 10 Nokia handsets (including N97 mini, 5800 XpressMusic and E72), with more Nokia smartphones expected to be added in the coming weeks.

    The company informed that from March 2010, new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost.

  • A New Vision of Mobile Social Networking: Interview with Olivier Chouraki, Mobiluck

    Mobiluck is another company that has rapidly realized the need for mobile information and mobile geo-locating people and places.

    Many companies are moving to the mobile space for a variety of reasons, but businesses that make the jump sooner tend to see the benefits much earlier and the relationships between users and companies tends to be stronger.

    Companies providing mobile web content, mobile media, mobile conversation tools, and mobile entertainment are finding themselves ahead of the curve and supplying their audiences with exactly what they need.

    Specifically, Mobiluck is a mobile service that allows users to find friends, places, and even people nearby with their smartphone. If you’ve got an account on Skype, AIM, or MSN for example, those friends can be included on the Mobiluck system, and their locations relative to yours will be shared and if they are nearby, what a great way to notify them.

    When asked if importing of contacts is remainst strictly to chat clients, Oliver Chouraki, CEO of Mobiluck says, “Yes at the moment you can import your MSN and other chat client contacts and we are working on Facebook and Twitter.”

    The service offered by Mobiluck is a location based service that is a more real life social network, allowing users to connect no matter where they are. Many will relate it to the online site, FriendFinder, but Mobiluck specializes in using the contacts you have on your programs and sharing just how far they are away from you.

    Oliver Chouraki

    Currently the service has 1.2 million people worldwide. “Our first place country is India, followed by the United States with rising numbers in Europe and the Middle East,” states Olivier on the rising popularity of the service.

    The Importance of Location Technology

    The concept of location technology is nothing new, we’ve been using these types of services on our GPS systems and on our cell phones with apps like FourSquare. Mobiluck is a social system that goes beyond connecting people with businesses, they look to connect people with people.

    If you look at the homepage on Mobiluck you will see simple text boxes where you can enter a keyword and you have ready buttons to search for places, friends, or people.

    “It’s not just tied to people you know, you can also search for people you don’t know so that you can meet new people who are at the same conference or in the same restaurant or at the same show and so on,” details Olivier.

    “We think that mobile social networks are extremely popular but today it is difficult to monetize and to create a profitable social network. On the other hand, the business model for yellow pages services, business directories, restaurant directories is very clear and can be very profitable. So what we are trying to do is combine the volumes of power of social networking with the profitability of yellow pages,” he continues sharing the business model for the company.

    It’s an interesting model considering that many social networks out there are still struggling with ways to monetize their efforts. Twitter for example has struggled with how to turn the millions and millions of users into a profitable community. Mobiluck offers up a business model that future social networks may emulate.

    Relationships with Businesses

    The vision of many mobile companies is that the mobile will be used for finding and being found. Many companies have an online presence, whether they own their website or just listed in directories, but due to the lack of understanding, very few of these sites are accessible on personal mobile devices. It’s not an uncommon thing since development for the mobile web is significantly different then general web site design.

    More often than not a company may not even be aware of their online presence, and if they do now they don’t know the difference between a standard website and a mobile site.

    As more and more people turn to mobile devices for information and interaction, companies that fail to realize the difference will be on the losing end of this turn in culture trends.

    “With Mobiluck companies can create their webpage in one minute for free. If you have a shop or a restaurant for example, you add a new place by filling out a form, and in a minute you have your own mobile page with a static web address that will be indexed by mobile search engines that not only Mobiluck users will be able to find your page, but anyone searching Google mobile or yellowpages mobile can still find your page and it will show what a lot of mobile users want to know: a shop description, name, the address of your place with a map, your phone number with a click to call, a price range and operation hours,” Olivier states.

    This type of return on information is what users are looking for when they are looking for informaiton on their mobile. Data consistently shows that users become frustrated and move on if there are barriers to getting this information. But aside from just receiving the information, users want to engage with that information and interact with others.

    Next Generation Search

    The next generation of search is more than just finding information, but what do people do with it? Mobiluck has seen the light, and many others in the mobile market are seeing the light too.

    Users feel more comfortable when they can interact with the information they are given by being able to rate something, comment on something, and share other people’s ratin gand coments. Favoriting and bookmarking are hot items right now and this type of information sharing is what has made the Web 2.0 era so dynamic.

    Businesses will not have a direct way to communicate with users, and users will have a new way to connect with their friends. With Mobiluck specifically, companies will be able to manage an internal mobile newsletter that keeps visitors and searchers informed on specials, events, and other important information related to the business. This information can be shared and responded to creating a two way street for information.

    Mobiluck will be speaking at Mobile Monday in Zurich, Switzerland on December 7, 2009. Be sure to pay special attention to the companies in the mobile space as they will collectively define the future of how we interact with data, businesses, and with one another.