It’s only March, but 2007 appears to be shaping up as the year of location-based mobile services.
No, really, it might be true this time. Honest.
Loopt Inc. this week is set to announce a major partner win, unveiling a deal to integrate its friend-finding application with AOL L.L.C.’s instant messaging service. Loopt users will be able to message each other on their phones via AIM, adding “presence”-the ability to know whether buddies are available, busy or away from a phone-to the increasingly popular mobile application.
“It’s been part of our go-to-market strategy for some time to pull in some world-class partners to pull in awareness and adoption,” said Mark Jacobstein, Loopt’s executive vice president of corporate development and marketing. “We believe the AIM deal helps cement our position as the leader in the space.”
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s GPS-enabled application appears to gaining traction as quickly as it is attracting attention. Loopt, which is available only through Sprint Nextel Corp.’s iDEN-based Boost service, allows users to see where their friends are, send location-sensitive messages and set alerts based on the proximity of their buddies. The company has garnered attention from nationwide media outlets and is plugging the offering with a high-profile TV commercial campaign featuring wireless users asking each other “Where you at?”
Perhaps more importantly, the application is being used by more than 100,000 Boost subscribers, and will be embedded on every one of the carrier’s handsets beginning in a few weeks. The company claims that the average user invites “between five and six” friends to join the service, and plans to strike more carrier deals in the coming weeks.
What has yet to be determined, though, is how much-or even whether-users will pay for the service. Boost offers Loopt free, but will soon start charging $3 a month for the service. The number of users who agree to shell out a few dollars for Loopt may serve as a kind of barometer for the market in these early days of GPS-enabled wireless applications.
“There will be some breakage” when Loopt is no longer free, Jacobstein conceded. “There’s no doubt. Will it be 5 percent, will it be 40 percent? I just don’t know.”
GPS widgets
Meanwhile, uLocate Communications Inc. last week unveiled a GPS-enabled application designed to help even the smallest publishers get attention. The Framingham, Mass.-based startup officially launched WHERE, an offering that allows users to personalize their phones with widgets-graphical interfaces that serve as windows to location-based services and content. Users are encouraged to create an online profile and choose from a number of widgets from different content owners, including Burger King, the real estate Web site Zillow.com and Eventful.com, an online event-listing service.”
“We take a 12- to 18-month process (to create an application) and drop it down to two of four days, depending on the complexity level of the widget, and then you’re on deck,” said uLocate CEO Walter Doyle. “We’re estimating we’ll have upwards of 500 widgets in the not-too-distant future.”
Both uLocate and Loopt are vying for a piece of what analysts say will be an enormous, if long-awaited, market for location-based mobile services. A U.S. survey by In-Stat MDR found that 85 percent of wireless subscribers were interested in accessing such offerings, and more than half of those were willing to pay a premium for them. ABI Research estimates that the global LBS market will grow to $8 billion in 2010, penetrating more than half of the world’s wireless subscribers. And while businesses are already using location-aware applications to track sales fleets, construction projects and other off-site activities, much attention is being paid to offerings that can direct a user to a local pizza joint or connect him with a friend, for a few dollars a month.
