Skyhook Wireless » mobilegroove

ALMOST 30 PERCENT OF US MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS USE THE MOBILE WEB AT LEAST ONCE PER MONTH, eMarketer reports, based on data from BIA/Kelsey and Constat. That’s up from 22.3 percent last year, but the boom doesn’t stop there: the figures say that 21 percent of US mobile users get online on their mobile device at least 10 times per week, up from 15 percent in 2008.

The survey found that nearly half of US subs use text messaging at least 10 times per week, and a fifth use mobile email that much. Popular mobile web tasks include local searches, looking for movie or entertainment info and information about restaurants and bars. Source

The popularity of location-based services applications - particularly their top-notch position in a variety of app stores - indicates that location apps are crowd-pleasers, but are they really game-changing? Nate Janewit - an MSG columnist and a computer scientist at Stanford University sharply focused on the larger issues around LBS - suggests companies need to think differently about location in order to wring more value out of their vast stores of data. The recent report on trends in location-aware apps from Apple's App Store, Google's Android Marketplace, and Blackberry's App World released by Skyhook Wireless, itself a provider of a patented hybrid system of location awareness, reveals a buoyant market for LBS apps. Indeed, the Apple App Store was found to have the greatest number of location-based applications, at over 2,300, and the highest percentage of paid for location apps, at over 75 percent. 67 percent of Blackberry apps are paid, and 80 percent of Android Marketplace apps are free. Clearly, location apps are popular, as their increasing ubiquity and popularity across a variety of app stores demonstrates. But move past the hype and the excitement generated by the flurry of activity in the space, and it becomes clear that location services - by themselves - are not game-changing. Location-aware data is not enough Indeed, mobile location-based services and social networking companies such as Loopt, Pelago, and Sense Networks have invested a great deal to achieve their vision, which revolves around the provision of an array of consumer and community services supported by socially-tagged, location-aware data stores. The data they have is impressive and the expansion plans they pursue are ambitious. However, they also face formidable competition from Internet giants (Google, MySpace, Facebook, and Yelp) that have already aggregated their own large sets of useful social content, and are anxious to extend their reach to mobile. Can companies compete on location data? Many players are positioning themselves to do just this. However, I submit that location services - and the structures and systems in place to deliver them - represent little more than an incremental innovation on top of the immense stockpiles of location data and content that are largely under the control of established Web companies and heavyweights. As a result, these Web giants are well-positioned to leverage location data to mobilize their offers and ultimately dominate the marketplace. There are, however, options and strategies mobile location services companies can employ to win the game - even though, as I argue in this is column, location services on their own are far from game-changing. Admittedly, not everyone shares my view. Sam Altman, founder of Loopt, told me in a recent interview that he strongly believes in the value of innovation in location-based services and their central position in personal mobility experiences. A prime example is the company's iPhone app. Loopt's Mix feature enables users -without compromising their personal privacy - to connect with other users nearby. What's more, users can find places nearby on Yelp and find what their friends on Loopt are saying about those places. Beyond this interesting user experience, Loopt's location-related content is thin, and therefore isn't terribly useful - yet. However, it's not so much the company's progress with their service offering that interests me as much as its business priorities.