Location based coupons finally become a reality, in Japan at least
By Stefan Constantinescu on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 2:55 AM PST In Services
Launching this September in Japan, coupons based on your location, calculated via GPS, can be sent to your mobile phone reports Wireless Watch Japan. This has been the dream for people pushing location based services since the late 90s. Of course back then mobile phones didn’t have GPS, but you could still accurately pin point someone via cell tower triangulation. The problem back then was that the only people who had access to your location was the mobile operators. With this, and I’m going by a rough machine translation here, people would opt in to access the service, so would the restaurants. This is how marketing should happen. The potential is there for this to rock, but will it take off? If the Japanese are only starting to play with location based coupons now, how long until their technology crosses the pond to Europe, and then crosses the pond again to reach America? Seriously, this stuff is taking a long, long, LONG time to happen.
Stefan, location-based coupons have gaining popularity in the U.S. for about the last six months. Check out Coupious (http://coupious.com), Coupon Sherpa, Yowza, Mobiqpons, etc. Cellfire has actually been around for a few years now. You are correct that widespread adoption will take significant time in the U.S., but the process is well underway.