In its new report, Berg Insight is predicting that the number of European users of mobile location-based services (LBS) will grow from 20 million users last year at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 37% to reach 130 million users in 2014. Local search, navigation services and social networking are believed to become the top applications in terms of number of users.
Berg’s senior analyst André Malm argues that that the key enablers for LBS are rapidly falling into place: application stores allow easier access to mobile services, and flat-rate data plans make pricing more transparent. Moreover, operators are opening their location platforms to third parties, while location aggregators have started to provide common APIs for accessing location data. “This together with ever growing GPS handset sales will allow more application developers to create location-enabled mobile applications,” he concludes.
On the similar note, Berg Insight estimates that more than 20% of mobile handsets shipped in 2009 will feature GPS and that the installed base in Europe will surpass 50% of total handsets in 2013.
As for the revenue models for service providers, many of them will rely on advertising, even though mobile marketing and advertising ecosystem is highly fragmented and immature. It will take several years before a successful model has been established that can reach out to a critical mass of active users. At the same time, navigation and tracking services can be expected to remain premium in the future…