Precision location capabilities like shopkick(http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/26156/?nlid=3447&a=f) which uses accoustic triangulation to locate a smartphone within an inddor setting (now used by Best Buy and several orher retailers) are starting to change the entire retail experience. By knowing exactly where the user is down to the aisle/shelf, you can push very targeted information/offers to their phone when they are "in the moment" of making decisions. This could be a game-changer for advertisers and retailers alike. It will be interesting to see what the threshold is for consumers being messaged throughout their shopping experience. As with any new app or service, if the benefits/savings far outweigh the annoyance, then they will flock to it. Otherwise, it could die like many early variants of location-based services. The precision of these services is getting down to inches which could have possible benefits for supply chain/product tracking as well. Irish company Decawave (http://www.decawave.com/) makes ultra-wideband chipsets that can achieve this type of accuracy. It will be interesting to see what new possibilities emerge form this. Maybe optimizing your path through the store based on your shopping list or knowing where that tough to find item is on the shelf.
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August 2010 Archives
There has been lots of buzz lately around location-aware solcial networks such as Foursquare (http://foursquare.com/), Gowalla (http://gowalla.com/), and Loopt (http://www.loopt.com/). Now Facebook is muscling into the game with its 400M+ user base. It will be announcing a location-based service sometime today. The real question is where will this lead us? Right now, over 50% of users are willing to share their location information in exchange for useful data (advertisements, local info) according to a recent study )http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-brief/51140-half-of-mobile-users-willing-to-share-location-with-advertisers) But as the volume of targeted advertising increases on their mobile devices, where will this value exchange end? In my book, The New World of Wireless: How to Compete in the 4G Revolution (http://www.whartonsp.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=013700379X), I talk about two future scenarios: Nature Aligns where users are willing to share everything with little/no security or privacy risks and get significant benefits in return that improve the quality of work/life; and Killer Bees where the use of personal data becomes toxic and is used to unwillingly exploit consumers and degrades the overall value of the networks that make this data available. I am hopeful that companies like Foursquare and Facebook understand the fragile game they are playing and carefully manage the ramp up in a way that matches the willingness of users to participate in the value exchange. If users begin to see little value in exchange for an ever-expanding window into their lives, location-based services are doomed to failure.
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Lockheed Martin recently announced they have developed a solution for secure communications using 3G smartphones in the battlefield environment (http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/story/lockheed-martin-develops-wireless-broadband-network-battlefield-communications/2010-08-16) This not only dramatically lowers the cost of handhelds for soldiers (a $300-500 smartphone versus a military radio that costs probably 10-100X that), but it also increases functionality and performance. Smartphones incorporate the latest technology and applications whereas Military radios may be using 10-30 year old technology due to the length of the development and procurement cycle. So having a soldier scan a bar code for a piece of equipment or show a Google map with the position of his squad members is a simple app on todays smartphones versus a dramatic customer development project for typical military hardware. The Lockheed solution adds a secure sommunication link to the standard 3G solution to meet government security needs and the base stations can be on the ground or in the sky. This is a really clever way to take advantage of technology available today and get it out there so users (soldiers) can innovate, just like the consumer app store model. Even is they have to give each soldier 3 smartphones so they can throw them away when they break, they will still come out ahead. I look forward to seeing lots of innovative apps coming from the battlefield.
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I now know what it's like to get fast internet to my mobile device everywhere I go. I recently took a trip for business and pleasure to Australia and was pleasantly suprised with 2-5 Mbps download speeds (on Optus and Telstra networks) just about everywhere I went (from Sydney up to Cairns). Despite seeing some unbelievable sites (beaches, rainforests, mountains, crocs, kangaroos), this had to be one of the highlights of my trip (can you tell I am a telecom geek?). I guess it is because we are so starved in this country for consistent high speed service (we are lucky if we get 1Mbps on average) Blame it on the iPhone driving 5000% data growth on AT&T's network over 3 years or the density of our population (about 5X Australia's), but somehow we are not getting it done. I applaud AT&T for at least admitting they have a congestion problem and using a multi-prong approach to solve it including WiFi microcells. An it is nice to see the little engine that could (T-Mobile) rolling out a nationwide HSPA+ network, but it is still not enough. The US has been a pioneer in wireless technology since its inception, so it does not seem adequate for us to have wireless network speeds equivalent to third world countries. Asia has 6X our population density and yet countries like South Korea and Japan are consistently ahead on wireless data speeds. Japanese operators are now doubling the number of macrocells to get ahead of the growth expected with 4G. The US will need to go through the same densification of its current cellular networks to have a chance to get ahead of the rampant mobile data growth with could exceed 1 GB/month per use in 2-3 years according to some industry experts. This will take microcells, picocells, femtocells, WiFi, and lots of offload/backhaul points along with more macrocells to deliver the kind of speeds we should expect from a wireless leader. Even though I loved Australia, I would prefer to live in the US and hope to brag about my wireless speeds someday.
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