Location-based services have been promoted by equipment and service vendors such as Qualcomm, Global Locate, Telcontar, MapPoint, Navstar and TomTom for some time, but wireless operators — at least in North America — have until recently resisted offering them to their customers. Until a couple of months ago, only Nextel was offering commercial Location-Based Services (LBS) in the United States.

But according to a new study from ABI Research, that situation is changing fast, with Sprint recently introducing an operator-assisted direction-finding service, and other operators set to join the LBS bandwagon in the near future. The process is under way already, and will gather momentum very quickly in 2006.

The new study, "Location-Based Services", examines handset-based LBS in detail, focusing on location technologies, operator deployment strategies and handset evolution, and includes forecasts for subscribers, service revenue and device shipments.

LBS enable navigation services, location tracking for field service staff and accurate billing for the on-site work they carry out, shopping and entertainment (in some world regions), and personal location tracking for employees, family and friends. Operators in Japan and Korea, which have been supporting LBS for several years, are expanding the range of services available while European operators are rolling them out as well.

Kenneth Hyers, ABI Research’s principal analyst of global wireless services and applications research, says, "When it comes to LBS, we’ve moved quickly from a walking pace to a run. As we forecast last year, GPS — an essential element for LBS — is starting to be included in GSM and WCDMA handsets as well as CDMA."

Location-based services, Hyers continues, will proliferate along with a variety of other services. Gaming, 411, SMS, MMS, photography — will all be bolstered and powered by LBS.

Some LBS vendors will prosper on their own, says Hyers; others — particularly smaller firms and those developing BREW and Java applications — will do well to rely on a wireless operator as a distribution network.

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, ABI Research maintains global operations supporting annual research programs, intelligence services and market reports in automotive, wireless, semiconductors, broadband, and energy. For information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.

See http://www.abiresearch.com/products/market_research/Location_Based_Services