After years of hype, mobile Location Based Services (LBS) are finally gaining traction among mobile phone users. This growth is driven on the supply side by a growing number of GPS-equipped handsets, and on the demand side by surging consumer interest in personal navigation functionality. According to a new report from ABI Research, LBS revenue is expected to reach an annual global total of $13.3 billion by 2013, up from an estimated $515 million during 2007.
Even though personal navigation is expected to remain the most popular consumer application over the next several years, other services like friend-finder, local information searches, family tracker applications, and enterprise applications – will all find niches under the LBS umbrella.
ABI Research industry analyst Jamie Moss argues that personal navigation and enterprise services are projected to be the highest revenue-generating services of the five LBS categories profiled, and are forecast to be worth about $4.3 billion and $6.5 billion respectively, per annum, by 2013.
However there are still important service-related developments needed to ensure LBS’s future success — the wider availability of unlimited data plans will spur service usage. In addition, the cross-network interoperability of services is also important. Once services provided by one carrier are capable of seamlessly incorporating users from other networks, then the usage of LBS will be driven virally by the desire to respond to and interact with friends and family on other networks…
More information about ABI Research’s “Mobile Location Based Services” report could be found on their website.