The drivers for a successful take off of LBS

LBS MARKET

The LBS market has been segmented into 3 main categories: • B2C: Business to Consumer • B2B2C: Business to Business to Consumer • B2B: Business to Business Details of this segmentation are provided in Figure 2. This segmentation highlights the diversity of services that can be offered by an operator. This diversity of services is also a diversity of business model. The LBS market has been especially Figure 1: GNSS industry stock market until 2007 boosted in the past year by the parallel September 2008 | take-off of PND (Pedestrian Navigation Device) market which has enabled the education of the mass market at a large scale. Thus, it is not surprising that, on representative sample of mobile users “early adopters”, one over four find “navigation” on mobile phone, a compelling offer [2], though of course many barriers remain. As another outcome of the survey regarding LBS interest from mobile users early adopters, one over three are very interested in “find the Nearest” services. Thus it is not surprising that the Positionning market expectations for the following years are quite encouraging, as shown in Figure 4 End user spending forecasted for location are quite significant: $4 B in 2008 to over $8.5 B by 2010. And the addressable market for LBS suppliers is around $1.3 B over next 4 years, with highest potential for operators in Asia Pacific & European markets. But these expected success are not granted, and will be driven by many factors:

• standard

• regulatory and socio-legal drivers

• business drivers

• technological drivers

Standard is a key drivers

A. Todays situation

Todays situation, regarding LBS standard, is already the results of years of work in standardization bodies like ETSI or OMA. Control plane standard is available, and mainly used for emergency call Supl V1 was the 1st attempt to standard . This was a good starting point, enabling

open business model but limited for certain application like tracking.

Supl V2, with richer features (Galileo compatible, tracking services compatible) is nearly available (Q3 2008) and enables also open business model. RRLP release 7 is also available, and is compatible with suplvV2, AGPS, and Ephemeris extension. And for the terminal, interfaces between GPS chipset and application are already standardized: NMEA JSR 179. B. … and future challenges This situation has enabled the deployment of first generation of LBS. But today standards are however quite limited, for most of the situation that will be met in the future. How to cover the diversity of :

• wireless network (GSM, GPRS, UMTS, TETRA, WiFi….),

• use cases (fleet management, navigation, geofencing….),

• architecture (network or handset centric),

• available positioning technologies (GPS, A-GPS, WiFi ToA, WiFi finger

printing, UWB, …),

• protocol for the application and services (SuPL, Control Plane, MLP, …) This is why future actions towards standardization bodies shall focus on:

• Handset: o Needs of standard between sensors and/or chipset: (WiFi,

Bluetooth, inertial MEMS, …) blocking advanced hybridisation o Needs of more advanced interfaces between location sensors and application

• Availability of standard on professional wireless network (TETRA, WiMAx). Current standard shall be adapted to the specificity of each network (bandwidth, gateway, …). Example: LIAISON project [1] has

pioneered A-GPS over TETRA

• 3G Long Term Evolution,

• 4G, new social services

Regulatory & socio legal drivers

Regulation can play a strategic role for consolidating the development of LBS. For example , regarding emergency call, different approaches have been adopted all around the world, some of them (like the US E911) being at the origin of the LBS take-off in north America: The US E911regulation is techno agnostic, with: a time frame for the deployment, and performance requirements (accuracy, availability). This has strongly pushed the US LBS market, and the emergence of

performing positioning technologies like Assisted GPS. The equivalent European initiative (E112 regulation) is quite late w.r.t US, and faces many obstacles for a deployment in all European countries, on of the main obstacle being the unclear business model for such specific services. And Japan has put in place an technology driven alternative regulatory approach , that forces the integration of GPS on terminal after April 2007. In the regulatory areas, the next challenges in the future, are:

• Transforming in Europe the chosen flexible approach of E112 into concrete deployment, through nNtional Policy

• Extending E112 regulation to professional wireless network

(WiFi, TETRA, …).

• Favouring the deployment of new performing technologies (like WiMax or UWB indoor technologies) by relaxing some existing constraints: for example, why not authorizing, for emergency

situation, on short period (emergency situation) higher power signals

emissions in certain frequencies?

• Favouring emergence of specific market that could bring strong

added value to the citizens, and will be pushed mainly by regulation: transportation of dangerous good, roach charging. Future regulation in those domain are now feasible, as adequate integrity system like EGNOS are now available all over Europe. It shall be noticed that in most of the market, regulation is not sufficient: “Big Brother” fear remains, and in parallel of regulatory action, there is an obvious need of going on educating the market. Blog dedicated to this goal already exists, as the one targeting LBS for professional market [3].

Figure 3: GPS Navigation system on mobile phones

Business drivers

Business drivers remains also fundamental. There is first the need of developing existing revenue streams:

• Enhancing existing service (yellow pages, advertising) through

greater location accuracy;

• Provide greater customer satisfaction New revenue streams should also be created, through offering of new services (personal tracking, social networking), dependant on high accuracy localization

(availability today of more accurate GNSS system, like EGNOS).

And strong marketing effort shall be maintained, like

• Special Offers, Rebates, ..

• User education

• Sales force education

• Clear prices and business model

Technical drivers

The killer technology that really drove growth of the 1st LBS generation up to now was the development of assisted-GPS technology. But such technology, though offering positioning services in outdoor and light indoor situation, doesn’t cover all the situation met tomorrow by the users. In the future, next challenges will be:

• To accelerate implementation of high QoS (accuracy, integrity) systems: augmentation system like EGNOS could definitively be better exploited

• To develop indoor technologies well adapted (technically, operationally, economically) to LBS

• To develop cheaper, more powerful and more friendly LBS handsets (200M GPS phones end 2008)

• To improve ease to use and integrated LBS applications

• To go on extending Digital map, especially for indoor environment

Conclusion

The LBS market, after difficult period [2000; 2005] is now taking off, and all indicators are“GREEN” for further growth. The killer technology that really drove growth of this 1st LBS generation, after 2005, was the development and availability of assisted-GPS technology. The key drivers for next generation are: standard, techno, regulation, marketing & usability. First generation of successful LBS is available, generates profit!… and laid the foundation for secondgeneration applications which will be more accurate, with better indoor penetration, and suitable for navigation purposes, as well as advertising and location-based social networking.”

Acknowledgment

This paper was written in the context of the research activities of the European project LIAISON. LIAISON is a research project led by Thales Alenia Space and involving 34 other European partners, which aims at developing Location Based Services for professional markets. LIAISON

has received research funding from the Community’s Sixth Framework Program. Special Thanks to the fruitful support of Thales Alenia Space Team (Laurent Claverotte, Hervé Buret, Olivier Guilbert, Fabrice Rialet,

Yves Capelle, Michel Monnerat).

References

[1] LIAISON www.liaison-project.eu/

[2] Teleatlas wireless consumer research

[3] http://www.liaison-de.eu/.