Spotlight on Location Based Services

With more than 4 billion GNSS devices on the global market today, Location Based Services (LBS) devices make up the majority of that number – a number that is expected to grow in coming years. The European GNSS Agency (GSA) takes an inside look at the LBS market, the latest trends and the challenges ahead.

Smartphones, tablets, tracking devices, digital cameras, portable computers, fitness gear, and more all use GNSS positioning for navigation, mapping, and determining consumer preferences. More so, safety applications benefit from accurate emergency caller location tracking, and LBS also assists in enterprise by providing mobile workforce management and tracking solutions. In social applications, LBS provides friend locators, and GNSS helps entertain users through gaming and augmented reality.

No End in Sight

According the GSA’s latest GNSS Market Report, the LBS market continues to grow, with high-end devices now commonly making use of multi-constellation and hybrid positioning. There are currently 3.1 billion GNSS-enabled devices, a number that is expected to increase to 5.2 billion by 2017.

Smartphones represent the majority of these devices, with tablets coming in second, and other GNSS-enabled devices accounting for about 100 million devices in 2013. Growth of the smartphone market is attributed to versatility and a growing affordability, and to a robust second-hand market, which carries over more than 50 million devices per year from North America to developing countries.

In 2013, smartphone shipments saw a tenfold increase from 2007.  Tablets saw a 640-percent increase between 2010 and 2013, and the wearable band market also saw a large surge in the first half of 2014, increasing 700-percent from the year before. The market for smartphones is forecast to grow by 6.2-percent per year through 2023, with 2.5 billion units shipped each year by that time. By 2023, the installed base of GNSS devices will reach almost 9 billion units.

Apps for Everything

Behind the growth of the smartphone market is a mass development of successful apps. On average, users download more than 70 apps per device. Downloads of apps that rely on positioning data will reach 7.5 billion by 2019, an increase from 2.8 billion in 2014. Almost half of the current apps on the market today are context-aware applications leveraging on local information, with games and entertainment representing the largest category. The GPS treasure hunt game Geocaching was one of the first location-based games on the market, and today it is played by 6 million users. This is just one example of the many games that integrates positioning, augmented reality, maps, and real environments. 

    Read this: GSA’s LBS News Stream

Now, app developers are showing an interest in using location data as an enabler for enterprise, consumer and public safety services. For example, location data can support fraud management and secure authentication services, and can be used for advertising and analytic applications.

In addition, EGNOS improves GPS accuracy by reducing the negative impact of ionosphere on the calculated position, which could benefit consumer applications that make use of more accurate location information in remote areas where network-based methods are not as effective.
Galileo Set to Improve Availability 

Difficult environments like urban canyons or indoors can pose significant challenges in regards to location accuracy, due to multipath obstructed views of satellites. Because people often use LBS within these types of environments, it is important that accuracy be improved.

Galileo satellites will further improve signal availability, enhancing continuity of service for BLS in these environments. Galileo, through contributing to multi-constellation solutions, can help satisfy the need for higher accuracy in demanding applications such as personal tracking.

Europe Strong in Apps

The LBS segment is currently dominated by non-EU players, with Asian companies leading handset revenues and North American companies holding the majority of the chipset market. The Asia-Pacific region is the largest regional LBS market in terms of devices, with a total of 480 million shipments in 2013 compared to 285 million in North America and 195 million in Europe. This is attributed to fast-paced economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region.

    Also see: LBS Case Studies and Success Stories

European players are strong in applications development. The European “App Economy” generated EUR 17.5 billion in revenues and employed 1.8 million people in 2013. By 2018, it is expected to contribute EUR 63 billion to the EU economy and employ 4.8 million people.

Beyond national borders, EU policy measures on roaming tariffs are fostering the usage of smartphones and apps, and price reductions of more than 80-percent since 2007 resulted in a 630-percent increase in the roaming market.

Overall, it is a time of expansion and innovation for LBS, one that will be helped even further by the introduction of Galileo. 

More Information

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