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2010 North American Consumer Location-based Services (LBS) Market: The Wireless Carrier Opportunity
Frost & Sullivan, June 2010, Pages: 130
The Consumer LBS sector has experienced tremendous change during the past 18 months, introducing the North American wireless carriers to significantly increased competition from smartphone application storefronts and attractively priced offers. This study examines current wireless carrier participation, vulnerabilities, and advantages. It also discusses activities and trends in the four major Consumer LBS application categories and summarizes current location determination technology options. A revamped eight-year forecast that scales back the carriers' piece of the expanding Consumer LBS revenue pie is detailed. Recommendations are included for major stakeholder groups.
Wireless Carriers Still Hold High Stakes in a Newly Competitive Consumer LBS Market
The consumer LBS sector has experienced tremendous change during the past eighteen months, forcing North American wireless carriers to deal with a new white-hot competitive landscape. Carrier dominance in the North American consumer LBS sector, which was carefully developed during the past decade, is now being directly threatened by smartphone application storefronts and free off-deck solutions. 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 provide fertile ground for carriers to partner with top-tier application developers and create, launch and promote new LBS solutions. LBS’ scope has expanded considerably with modern data networks capable of retrieving more complex information. The increasing penetration of smartphones as well as better graphics, touch screens, and battery power provide LBS users with more value and in turn expedite LBS adoption. Even feature phones are becoming more powerful. “In tandem with technology advances, carriers are making their networks and locationing capability more accessible to LBS application developers,” says the analyst of this research. “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.
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 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,” notes the analyst. “To thrive in this market, carriers have to be real marketers – monitoring the customer needs, identifying product voids, working with creative partners, and publicizing the distinct benefits that carriers bring to today’s mobile user.”
Application Sectors
Expert Frost & Sullivan analysts thoroughly examine the following market sectors in this research:
- Consumer navigation
- Family finder
- Location-based social networking
- Location-based gaming
Technology
The following technology is covered in this research:
- Location determination technologies
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