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State if LBS in US:
The US location based
services has now reached new heights with the merger of Nextel and
Sprint. In a Techweb news (2005) it is claimed that the “use of
location based services in the US cellular phone market is expected
to gather momentum very quickly in 2006 among wireless operators.”
For this claim they cite the reason of increasing launch of new
location based services by the mobile operators such as
operator-assisted direction-finding service.
The same sentiment is
shared in a wirelessdevnet.com press release (2005) which points out
that in the US until March 2005 the wireless operators in the US
were resisting the location based services which were initiated by
the equipment and service providers such as Qualcomm but now the
mobile operators have joined the bandwagon and are now pushing the
location based services.
State of LBS in Europe:
Compared to the Asia
pacific and the US, the European nations have been lacking behind in
the location based services sector. But a recent report in
VNUNet.com in the Netherlands has published a research carried out
by Juniper Research, Iain Thomson (2005). In this report Juniper
Research states that, “location based services for mobiles have
faired poorly so far, but are now growing steadily. The same study
found that the location based services is currently worth $1bn but
will grow to $8.5 bn by the end of 2010.
In a Sweden based Berg Insight (2005) report,
Johan Fagerberg a senior analyst explains that “ This year we have
begun to see the expected shift in revenues from voice to non-voice
services in the mobile industry. Increasingly user friendly handsets
paired with a more mature approach to content services create the
right conditions for launching new offerings on the market”.
That is the reason for the taking off of location based
services in the European market. The report further predicts that
the European market will grow by 153 % during 2005 to reach € 274
million.
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