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Location-based services describe the wide variety of services that are activated by knowing a user’s location. These can be divided into two categories: location-based services and location-enhanced services.
Rental Driven Services
Location-Based Services (LDS) are services for which the determination of location is critical to the provision of the service. Some examples are:
- Business owner tracking his fleet of vehicles
- A father who keeps track of the location of his children.
- An owner who finds a lost pet
- A government department that keeps track of its employees when they enter dangerous areas
- A driver navigating safely to his destination
- Determining whether an elderly patient with dementia has left a care facility
The location accuracy required for LDS varies from service to service. For example, turn-by-turn navigation requires great precision, as you need to be able to tell the driver exactly when to turn. Determining whether an elderly patient with dementia has left a care facility requires a lower level of precision. In general, all of these apps benefit from using a combination of GPS and mobile data. GPS provides pinpoint accuracy over most of the earth’s surface, while cellular can fill coverage gaps and uses less battery power than GPS.
To date, the LDS business model has tended to be based on monthly subscriptions that provide a certain number of free location fixes per month. Once the free transaction limit is reached, the user may be denied further rental requests or may be charged a transaction fee.
An important aspect of LDS is privacy management. The customer must ensure that the location information is only used for the agreed purpose. A subscription model makes it easy to get this permission and set appropriate limits on it. However, if the client is tracking employees or other third parties, then the client is required to comply with relevant privacy legislation. In the absence of clear legislation, some useful guidelines are:
- Anyone being tracked must opt in to the service.
- There should be periodic reminders sent to the person being tracked
- It should be easy to unsubscribe from the service.
Because most location-based services involve a high degree of trust in the provider and use a subscription business model, such services can be well suited to mobile operators.
Enhanced Rental Services
Enhanced location services are mobile applications whose primary function is not related to location, but which are nevertheless enhanced by accessing location information. If Apple’s iPhone is any guide, then most mobile apps can be improved with the mobile location app. For example:
- Mobile search can use location to produce results that are relevant to the user’s location, for example, finding the nearest restaurant. This form of location-enhanced search is often called Local Search.
- Location-aware social networking sites can provide the location of friends, significant others, and children.
- Dating apps can filter results based on the proximity of users.
- Weather apps can automatically provide local weather information
- News sites can tailor content to the user’s location
In fact, any site that provides information to mobile subscribers can benefit from location, even if it’s just to establish the country the user is in. Often the location doesn’t have to be particularly exact, so this type of location is well-suited to Wi-Fi and cellular location technology, but can also benefit from GPS.
Because location is only an incremental benefit for location-enhanced services, the business model tends to be driven by the business drivers of the core service. For example, search engines typically have an advertising-based business model, so Local Search would also use the same model, taking advantage of a higher premium due to the value of spatial relevance. Another common model for these kinds of services is for advertising to fund the basic service and then a subscription or pay-per-view for premium content.