Location-Based Services: Market Forecast, 2011-2015

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Although mobile operators continue to lose control over location information with the increased adoption of GPS, the strong growth in global location-based services presents some potentially significant revenue opportunities for them if they focus on the right areas, according to a new report from Pyramid Research (http://www.pyr.com/).
Location-Based Services: Market Forecast, 2011-2015 provides a detailed overview of the current status and size of the location-based services market. It takes a specific look at the positioning of the mobile operators within the value chain and how they can leverage their assets to take a stake in this growing opportunity. Several services are analyzed, but the biggest focus is on navigation, the largest in terms of revenue where various business models are establishing themselves and a range of different players are focusing their efforts, creating a dynamic and fast-changing market segment. Other services such as people finding and local search are also covered. Case studies are provided of operators in all geographic regions to provide a range of different examples and market approaches.
Download an excerpt, or purchase the report here: http://www.pyramidresearch.com/store/Report-Location-Based-Services.htm?sc=PRN060111_RPLBS
"Following many years of high expectations, the location-based services market is finally coming of age. Revenue is expected to reach US$10.3 billion in 2015, up from $2.8 billion in 2010," according to Jan ten Sythoff, Analyst at Large for Pyramid. "There are a number of different factors driving market growth, including increasing GPS and smartphone adoption, success of new business models, continued growth of mobile advertising and the wider coverage and higher speeds of mobile networks," adds ten Sythoff.
Growing adoption of GPS devices is the key driver, helping a whole host of different applications and services to grow. "For mobile operators, this is an opportunity to drive new revenue streams, but it is also a threat because it means access to location information is no longer their monopoly. In 2008 operators gained around 80 percent of all location-based service revenue. This has fallen to around half, but the total market has grown more than fivefold," he says.
Navigation, local search and people-locating services are the key areas for operators to target because this is where we believe they are best positioned. "There are important regional differences in the location-based services market that mobile operators needs to pay attention to," notes ten Sythoff. "Developed markets in APAC with very high GPS penetration, such as Japan and South Korea, are progressive in offering location-based services, people finding and advertising in particular while emerging regions such as Africa & the Middle East and Latin America have much lower GPS and smartphone penetration, and consequently there are fewer opportunities for location-based services," he indicates. Regulatory factors are driving investment into some markets while some operators are launching location-based services to differentiate in competitive markets such as Nigeria.
Location-Based Services: Market Forecast, 2011-2015 is part of Pyramid's research report series, and is priced at $3,495. Download an excerpt, or purchase the report here: http://www.pyramidresearch.com/store/Report-Location-Based-Services.htm?sc=PRN060111_RPLBS.
Contact:
Jennifer Baker, +1-617-871-1910, jbaker@pyr.com

SOURCE Pyramid Research

Percept Knorigin signs deal with Alcatel Lucent to provide digital content

(IANS) Indian digital media company Percept Knorigin (PK) said Wednesday it had signed an agreement with French telecom firm Alcatel Lucent to expand the distribution of digital entertainment content to its subscribers across India.
"PK will use Alcatel-Lucent's digital media store (DMS) to enhance its web and mobile entertainment service, which is offered to consumers through partnerships with telecom service providers such as Bharat Sachar Nigam Limited, Mahanager Telephone Nigam Limited and Bharti Airtel," the company said in a statement.
Digital media store simplifies the distribution of applications and multimedia content across any network to any connected device including PCs, mobile phones and TVs.
The company's services like Adchakra, Cinecurry, HelloTV and 51010 dial-a-video has experienced rapid growth of nearly 300 percent last year. Therefore, to meet the increasing demands the company needs a robust digital media platform that could fulfill the requirements of mobile and web service providers.
With more than 1.2 billion people, India provides an enormous potential audience for the company's entertainment content.
"We were looking at a scalable service which can keep pace with the great growth we experienced last year, one that can provide us with the capability to create services across mobile phones, tablets and laptops," said Viraj Malik, managing director and chief executive officer, Percept Knorigin.
"Our deployment of Alcatel-Lucent's digital media store will provide an all-in-one solution to the challenges service providers face in terms of content, platforms and business operations," he added.
Digital media store will enable service providers offering PK services to establish personalised portals supported by merchandising tools.source

Wait Could Be Longer For Better 3G Services

The promise of high-end phone services by mobile firms through the much-hyped third generation (3G) telecom technology seems to have hit a roadblock as customers complain of frequent call drops and inconsistent internet speeds.

Experts say it could take between six and nine months for the service to stabilise.

Anuj Kumar, a Delhi-based banker, preferred switching back to the 2G network after he got exasperated by deficient service and inconsistent network coverage.
"Problems of call drops increased once I switched to 3G network. The voice quality also became very poor. I was left with no option but to switch back to the basic network. In my line of job uninterrupted calls are a must," Kumar told IANS.
Pratibha Srivastava, a sales manager with a leading private bank, had similar grievance.
"The connectivity on the 3G network is very, very poor, especially when a person is on the move. While the network disconnects frequently, the voice quality is also not good at all," said Srivastava.
Among the nine-million odd people who are estimated to have opted for 3G services in the country, there are many others like Kumar and Srivastava who are facing similar problems with their services across the country.
The private telecom operators who shelled out billions for buying spectrum claim that every new technology needed some time for maturing and becoming consistent. According to them it was a matter of time for consumers to experience the promised quality of 3G.
But Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman J.S. Sarma does not agree with the claims of operators.
"It is high time customers start getting quality services for the money they are paying. You cannot go on saying that the problems are caused due to initial phase launch for so long. Such excuses can be accepted for a week or so," Sarma told IANS.
"We also need to look into what kind of investments these people are making," Sarma said and added that the telecom watchdog was looking into the matter and would come out with a quality check very soon.
Mahesh Uppal, a telecom analyst and director of consultancy ComFirst India, maintains the networks are having problems because they were moving customers from 2G to 3G.
"Even I am having problems with the 3G network. I feel that this is because the networks are in a transition phase. Therefore some hiccups are probably expected. These companies are moving into 3G in an incremental way," Uppal told IANS.
On the other hand the telecom operators say that every new technology takes time to find its feet and so it is with 3G.
"You have to realise integrating new technology with an older one takes time -- 3G is like going back to square one. Operators almost have to build an entire network," said Rajan Matthews, director general of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).
"The operators will take almost 6-9 months to straighten out things."
Though the telecom watchdog does not have a record on the specific number of customers who have switched from 2G to 3G so far, some telecom operators have revealed their data individually.
While the dominant player Airtel currently has over two million 3G subscribers, Idea Cellular has one million across the country. On the whole, there are 811 million mobile phone subscribers in the country.

Jaideep Ghosh, director, KPMG advisory services, too, agrees with operators. Since the technology was new to India and companies were still in the implementation phase, some technical glitches were bound to come up, he said.

"Some operators launched it six months back and some are still in the process across all the circles. So it will be too early to a conclude that the services are good or bad," Ghosh told IANS. "We should wait till all operators launch full-fledged services."

A few operators also blame scarcity of spectrum to be a hitch for the service providers not being able to perform efficiently.

"The larger problem is not 2G or 3G but spectrum allocation. If you do not have enough spectrum, how would you be able to provide better services?" queried a senior official with a leading telecom operator.

Tata DoCoMo was the first private player to launch the 3G services in the country -- in November 2010. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular are among the other operators who have launched their 3G services across the country.

Third generation telephony services are supposed to allow faster connectivity with some new applications such as Internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange.source