Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
decline in profitability). Location-aware multimedia and gaming content will
become important and extend the current business of content owners.
2.2
Today's Whereness Businesses
2.2.1
ITS and LBS
Intelligent transportation services (ITSs) in various guises have been developed
since the 1980s to use ICT to make transport safer, more efficient, and better for
the environment. They range from simple radio tagbased toll passes and ticketing
systems, basic public information services broadcast by radio and more recently
on the Internet, to much more sophisticated systems controlling city traffic and
feeding automatic routes to individual drivers with navigation equipment. Almost
all are dependent on positioning and location technology.
There have been attempts to base all services on a single system but the main
conclusion after 20 years of research and development is that all the approaches
remain fragmented. Part of the problem is that the main organizational players
have widely differing objectives and timescales. Government and local
authorities are slow to react, can be conservative regarding technology, and are
accountable to the public. At the other extreme, the ICT and electronics industry is
focused at providing equipment and services that are out of date sometimes in a
matter of months, some of which are difficult to use and not always suitable for
use in safety critical activities such as driving a vehicle.
One of the aims of this topic is to suggest that ITS is only part of a much
bigger set of opportunities. For example, transport applications normally focus on
vehicles and passengers but the actual people involved usually only use vehicles
for part of their journeys that normally starts and ends indoors. When he or she is
traveling, the typical young passenger is likely to be using a personal music player
and mobile phone (which now includes a camera), the business person a
Blackberry (or whatever supersedes it), and anyone that is health conscious a
pedometer-like device to count calories and monitor the body. All these are likely
to have positioning technology included and all could be capable of delivering the
main ITS applications.
Location-based services that are mostly associated with mobile phone
applications have also been slow to develop. For reasons similar to why ITS
applications have fallen short of their potential, LBS are probably also too
fragmented to be really big businesses. Any service that for only works on a
particular handset or from a specific service provider or that needs special skills to
use is unlikely to be hugely popular. Perhaps the one exception would be if it is
fashionable!
Once LBS along with ITS and all the other niche areas are treated as a whole,
then the Whereness opportunity becomes greater and the investments needed to