ABI Research: global off-deck LBS app activations to exceed 260 million in 2010
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 25, 2009 at 1:00am
ABI Research says that he surging popularity enjoyed by affordable off-deck LBS applications is creating new momentum, a more open environment, and increased competition in a location industry that has long been dominated by carriers offering expensive subscription-based on-deck services.
ABI Research expects off-deck LBS application downloads to increase to more than 260 million in 2010 and to reach almost two billion by 2014.
“The main drivers of this off-deck LBS revolution are the sudden rise in popularity of a new generation of touch-screen GPS-enabled smartphones, combined with a wide range of application stores launched by handset and mobile operating system vendors,” says ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte. “While Apple has set the stage with the iPhone/iTunes platform, it is now being copied by Google (Android), RIM, Nokia (Symbian), and Microsoft (Windows Mobile), allowing smaller LBS developers to compete with traditional off-deck LBS players such as Telenav, Networks in Motion, and Loopt. This competition results from a lower cost structure based on crowd-sourced location content, advertising-funded business models, alternative positioning technologies, and viral marketing techniques.”
However, the nascent off-deck LBS environment is already threatened by looming fragmentation both within and between platforms, and by increasing uncertainty surrounding viable business models, with the ubiquitous freemium and ad-funded approaches illustrating end users’ limited willingness to pay. Google’s recent announcement offering free turn-by-turn navigation on Android phones has cast further doubt on the prospects for monetizing off-deck LBS, while at the same time undermining the valuation of established hardware players such as Garmin and TomTom, despite both companies recently having launched handset-based products.
While stand-alone off-deck LBS applications will continue to flourish in the coming years, in the longer term they will be gradually replaced by embedded location services such as geo-enabled browsers, location-aware messaging, micro-blogging and other mobile services: these integrated solutions will offer a superior user experience to the average consumer, compared with downloading and managing a portfolio of separate applications.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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