By LISA PACCIONE
Vice President
Global Sales Development
Knowing where people are has never been more valuable.
By allowing businesses to pinpoint locations of mobile devices in order to present relevant offers, reward loyal clients and gather valuable customer data, location-based services (LBS) present some of the hottest opportunities in mobile commerce today. However, the tapping of this opportunity will depend on how mobile service providers coordinate technology standards, policies and protocols for use, among other factors. The future is bright for LBS, representing a critical opportunity for both businesses and providers.
Far from just offering a fun way to share where people are on websites like Foursquare, LBS have evolved to enable a multitude of interactions for end users, including posting updates, receiving valuable marketing offers, sharing tips, playing games, finding directions and, for business transaction security, validating locations for authentication purposes. And the metrics behind these interactions point to a tremendous opportunity.
Informa projects LBS data consumption in North America will more than double in the next two years, rising from less than 500 million MB in 2010 to almost 1 billion MB in 2012 to 2.5 billion in 2014. Gartner also forecasts that worldwide LBS users will grow from 96 million in 2009 to more than 526 million in 2012, a more than fivefold increase. What’s more, Pyramid Research predicts LBS revenues will grow by more than 300 percent in the next five years, from $2.8 billion in 2010 to $10.3 billion in 2015.
To address this increasing demand, mobile service providers will continue to refine the most efficient ways to coordinate LBS technology with industry-defined protocols for LBS use. The three primary methods of location determination are by cell IDs, which use cell towers; networks, which use Wi-Fi; and GPS, which use satellites. Integrating these technologies will be key for efficient LBS delivery.
At the same time, mobile service providers must develop proper policies and controls for LBS use. These require operators to verify users explicitly opt in to LBS, to provide users the ability to revoke consent at any time and to maintain subscriber records. Standardizing these processes and other safeguards will be critical for driving consumer adoption of LBS.
Despite the challenges, LBS promise to open a new level of customer-relationship-building interaction, improving customer service and delivering extra value through the customization made possible from knowing where people are.
GSD Vice President Lisa Paccione describes how enterprises can take advantage of location capabilities to offer more relevant information to their end users.
The post Putting Businesses on the Map with Location-Based Services appeared first on Syniverse Synergy Magazine.
