The explosion of GPS options is positively staggering. Stand alone navigation devices, tracking devices, integrated phone applications, geocaching, geotagging, and GPS games, but to name a few of the off-the-self products and services.
But what if you need to design a system that manages secure shipments of valuables traveling by common carrier, or tracks traveling executives in embattled foreign countries or monitor the whereabouts of a few thousand Alzheimer victims in a tri-state managed care operation, or providing judges with personal tracking and alarm security when sitting on capital cases… the answer is the gpVector miniMT palm sized, quad band, 2-way locating transceiver.
Starting such a project from scratch would take years, but licensing middle ware and portal technology with an off the self device can accelerate the process while keeping a lid on the costs.
Have you seen the billboards on the cellular highway?
If its FREE we'll take it. That's the new marketing mantra for acquiring customers or at least thier eyeballs and eyeballs are the fodder of advertisers and the banks for pressured celluar carriers in need of revenue.
The hghly desirable upgrade toGPS Traffic reports was available for a $60 annual fee. With a contracting economy every penny counts and uptake of the service slowed. To stimulate momentum advertisers are placing relevant messages right on the traffic maps.
The vernaular between the service provider, advertiser and consumer has to be mutally relevant for it to succeed. Until the economy turns around, technology will be married to advertising if it is to have amarket presence. Mobile marketing may be the only way to reach a consumer as it presents the point of sale opportunity right before the consumer in real time.
Databeans expects revenue for GPS chipsets to grow at an average annual growth rate of 11 percent, reaching nearly $ 1.3 billion in 2013. Today, Databeans estimates the market at $729 million.
With the large number of current mobile phone users and the relatively low penetration rate of GPS into phones, the handset market should drive GPS growth. In addition to the iPhone, the major handset players, Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung, all offer phones utilizing the technology. Garmin, the world’s largest GPS manufacturer has also entered the handset space, set to release its nüvifone in the third quarter of this year. In general, as consumers replace their previous phones with new models, their demand for increased functionality should lead to strong sales for GPS technology into handsets.
More Than 550 Million GPS-Enabled Handsets Will Ship by 2012, Says ABI Research. In the wake of personal navigation devices' success, cellular carriers are offering on-board and off-board navigation solutions, as well as a range of Personal LBS (Location Based Services) such as friend finder and local search on GPS handsets. Community and social-networking-related functionality, such as the sharing of POIs (Points of Interest) and geo-tagged pictures, is also becoming popular and is expected to boost GPS-enabled handset uptake as carriers, handsets manufacturers, and service providers look to capitalize on the LBS trend.
However, as GPS begins to penetrate lower-end phones, the cost, power consumption, and footprint of GPS chipsets will have to be further reduced. This will be made possible by single chipset technology and the emergence in 2009 of combination chips integrating GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi all on one die. Major silicon vendors such as Broadcom, NXP, and Atheros are well positioned to develop such solutions following the acquisition of GPS chipset vendors Global Locate, GloNav, and u-Nav, respectively.
At the same time, the thorny issue of indoor GPS coverage has to be addressed, since handset-based LBS services are frequently used in challenging environments with reduced GPS signal strength. Network-assisted A-GPS and high-sensitivity GPS-receivers are becoming key requirements to reduce the time necessary to acquire fixes and to improve location accuracy.
ABI Research's report, GPS-Enabled Mobile Devices, examines the market landscape and future potential for GPS-enabled mobile phones. It discusses critical business and marketing issues, as well as market opportunities and challenges for handset vendors, mobile operators, semiconductor vendors, and other industry players who address the GPS-enabled handset market.
Facebook and MySpace were the tipping point for the social networking revolution.
What is expected to follow will not only permeate our culture, but will percolate more than $2.5 trillion in application, device and subscriber revenue for i centric enterprises says isuppli.
By 2020, mobile social networking will change the means and methods of how business is conducted around the world. Anticipating this paradigm shift, the dynamic Silicon Valley investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) has invested $30 million on iPhone-related startups (iFund) positioning the firm at the leading edge of a changing world.
The four announced iFund releases are: Pelago, a company that offers "social discovery and location sharing" through an application called Whrrl, available now; iControl, a home automation and monitoring service slated for the Q1 of 2009; ng:moco, an iPhones games company which will ship its first titles later this month which is live on the AppStore and GOGII, "a new social interaction and marketing platform" set for launch later this year. The GOGII Web site indicates the company will offer text messaging services that connect individuals with groups that share common interests.
The transition will reward transparency and proximity with opportunities that occur with greater velocity and endorse geo-spatial relationships as a currency for productivity.
The revenue potential for Social Networking may depend on GPS tracking of consumer behavior patterns
Online social networking is morphing as personal location service options gain acceptance with cellular subscribers. Not only can subscribers choose to be visible or invisible to others, but they can share the history of their movements, destinations, experiences and reactions to just about everything. Now 360 topographic degrees can be complimented with geo-tagged multimedia content, personal commentary, and serendipitous encounters. Within the next five years PLS application usage will grow, pushing industry valuations to $3 plus billion from licensing and revenue-sharing generated from applications and sites like Plazes, Bebo, Yelp, Digg, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Tribe, LinkedIn and Gypsii.
Social networks function under an autonomous operational model, in which network members serve dual roles as both the suppliers and the consumers of content…which now includes geospacial information. This is in contrast to a traditional enterprise model, where the suppliers and consumers are distinct agents.
Social networks are beginning to be adopted by healthcare professionals as a means to manage a collection of knowledge bases, collaborate and disseminate information and to highlight individual physicians and institutions.
How are they going to consistently produce profits to match their soaring valuations?
MySpace is expected to garner $700 million to $800 million in revenue in fiscal 2008. Mostly in brand advertising. Recently it forged partnerships with major record labels Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Vivendi's Universal Music Group to offer its 117 million members tickets, ring tones and artist merchandise.
Driving a good chunk of sales is a project launched last summer called HyperTargeting, software that mines the profiles of MySpace users to deliver ads tailored to their interests. A similar effort to Facebook’s Beacon, but better managed. Hundreds of advertisers are part of the program, including Toyota and Taco Bell. Another income source is the sale of mobile ring tones and ads. It is "definitely looking into subscription services."
Facebook hopes to double its revenue to $300 million to $350 million this year, its fourth of existence. Google's revenue soared fivefold, to $440 million, in its fourth year.
LinkedIn. The business-contact site has built a booming business in five years through banner ads from the likes of Porsche and Microsoft; subscriptions; job postings charged to corporations and small-business owners; and corporate sales to Symantec, MTV and others. LinkedIn is developing other revenue streams, including research services to locate experts.
Social-networking site Bebo, recently acquired by AOL for $850 million, is leveraging its popularity with a predominantly young audience — many are 13 to 24 years old. It has struck up marketing initiatives with advertisers such as Nike and Apple. That is a key reason it has been profitable the past 18 months. Bebo has 43 million users.
The clock is ticking and time will tell if personal location services will tip the scales for advertisers as GPS tracking and bar coded promotions are the brick and mortar analytics retailers will be watching.
The potential of Personal Location Services (GPSPLS) applications is limitless.
While we know that the real-time knowledge of a person’s location provides navigational advantages for driving and expedite critical emergency rescue services, these tools are only a precursor to what is to come from applications of GPSPLS technologies.
Enrichment of GPS geospatial data will become its own marketplace.
Google signed a five year license agreement with the Tele Atlas that gives Google access to Tele Atlas maps and dynamic content in more than 200 countries around the world. “Geospatial data enhances global search significantly by organizing data and delivering results based on location,” said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps.” The Google agreement gives Tele Atlas access to edits for its maps from Google’s community of users, whose suggested changes can help the company further increase the quality and richness of Tele Atlas maps.
Keep a sharp watch out for direct-to-consumer remotely hosted third-party LBS applications.
These Apps will bypass carrier network infrastructure and will reduce carriers to the status of bandwidth providers making LBS platforms obsolete. The challenge for platform vendors will be to focus on unique functionalities that can only be offered via carriers, such as spatial triggers, anonymous bulk location, control plane-based services, and LBS-enabled advertising as well as multi-access network solutions. Let's all wave bye-bye to the virtual world and say hello to the physical world of $2.2 billion in revenues by 2013. White Paper
Industry leaders GTX Corp and Phantom Fiber will be creating Location Aware Enterprise Applications for use with Personal Location Services (PLS) Products and platforms running on GPS enabled smart devices worldwide...Listen to Patrick Bertagna, CEO of GTX Corp in a recent radio interview: RedChip
According to market researcher iSuppli, the global number of GPS-enabled handsets is forecasted to nearly triple from 2007 to 2011, with some 450 million US mobile handsets being GPS capable by 2011.
Today’s community of mobile device users is expanding from 3 to 4 billion. A significant milestone of lifestyle adoption, this last billion subscribers being made up of consumers who's first web experience is on a mobile device. Consumer device brands such as; TomTom, Garmin and Magellan have created a billion dollar marketplace for these naïve you-see-you service applications. Numerous enterprises offer GPS enabled logistic services for cargo and trucking, but it's companies like GTX Corporation that are providing advanced GPS applications – Personal Location Services – that will forever change our experience of GPS.
As far and as fast as the GPS marketplace has grown we are only at the nascent stages of broadly distributed GPSPLS applications such as social networking and proximity marketing — Pin pointing the whereabouts of people, places, assets or opportunities of interest within reach of your current location, or giving specific people or marketers a virtual line of sight to ourselves and our intentions represents a potentially significant demand for GPSPLS applications.
One recent GPSPLS application (myathlete.biz) that “lights-up” athletes running long distance marathon events has met with broad acceptance by spectators, runners and event producers. In this licensed application of the GTX Corporation’s gpVector Technology, the marathoner wears a miniaturized, battery powered tracking device affording spectators a virtual line of sight to the runners over the near twenty-six mile event course. GPSPLS has transformed what was once a finish-line event into a four-plus hour spectator sport. As distribution increases advertising sponsors will participate providing underwriting revenue alternatives to subscription access.
A near term technological extension of GPSPLS will be the integration of remote wireless bio-monitoring affording athletes and their trainers a dynamic physiological tool set. That very same GPSPLS tool set will provide at-home and institutional care givers of Dementia patients that may “wander,” a virtual line of sight to their wards while allowing those afflicted to move about without barriers and restraints…if they should wander, the GTX Corporation device will announce their breech of the preset perimeter, identify their location, speed and direction in addition to their vital signs.
For PLS to function as a real-time service, the underlying Global Positioning System technology has to seamlessly correspond with active cellular telemetry, internet portal support and online mapping applications that identify and communicate location, direction, movement history, velocity and altitude of the target via computer and mobile devices.
GTX Corporation(GTXO.OB) and its GP Vector technology has been at the forefront of developing the miniaturized devices, proprietary software and application user interfaces to enable licensees to offer Personal Location Services to their branded base of customers.
What is PLS? PLS (Personal Location Services) synchronize GPS technology applications with real-time marketing data bases to communicate personally relevant options at a specific time and place to opt-in subscribers
Mass Mobile Markets of One Both the outbound media and the action taken by the subscriber may be tracked to enrich the data bases and eventually facilitate the utilization of predictive algorithms and intelligent forecasting to anticipate consumer requests
Proximity Marketing Personal Location Services presented by GPS transceiver technology enables two-way correspondence between enterprises and subscribers with media-rich content
