Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Where 2.0

In the middle of observations that iOS4 operating system tracks the user location from the Apple iPhone and collects in a database in an unencrypted format, the Where 2.0 conference was held in the Santa Clara, USA last week, which saw giants such as Facebook, Google and LBS providers such as Foursquare, Groupon discussing there strategy in terms of location based services. www.where2conf.com

Despite the downside in privacy concerns in location based services, as enunciated above in the Apple cases (Apple eventually rebutts the claim saying there only collecting hotspot information from phones), there is a widespread traction and relevance to location based services in Smartphones. The location information and the corresponding context of the location in terms of the user preference and social and crowd sourced information surrounding the location presents a value proposition, which differentiates the smart phone from other conventional phones no matter what the access technology is (2G,3G,WiFi and LTE).

Increasingly application service providers will tap this value proposition, to create myraid services for diverse lifestyles, entertainment, productivity etc based on IP technology. I envision there will application specific smart phones having specific characteristics such as sensory, memory, etc. to address a particular need, which would go beyond the need to using the smartphone only for voice communication purposes. The smartphone would progressively be less costly to afford such solutions in the long term.

In this context the service providers thought process and business model would be interesting to see, in how they address this burgeoning market.