Treasure Maps
By AZAM on November 12, 2007The map maker is becoming a target of interest with a treasure trove of data that will become very interesting for location based services. Nokia made its move on the map by purchasing Navteq, and not to mention Nokia added the GPS feature on the Nokia mobile handsets. Nokia will make GPS and location based features as a more common application on mobile devices in the future. TomTom earlier announced intention to acquire TeleAtlas at 2B Euros. Garmin offered to top the bid for Navteq by offering 2.3B Euros. TomTom expressed increased level of interest in Navteq by increasing their bid to 2.9 Euros. The digital map making business is benefiting in increasing demand and will likely on increase as the number of application develop increases. Location based technologies will likely offer users a new approach in mobile maps and navigating with surroundings with value added services.
The US military GPS system is unleashing a number of new commercial and consumer applications. Just, like the US government investment in the development of ARPANET the progenitor of the Internet has lead to enormous windfall for commercial and consumer applications; the GPS technology will likely lead to a number of new investment in companies and applications to advantage of the technology.
Consumer applications are developing rapidly using location based technology. The technology has been used for quite some time in the marine navigation and on the road in transportation industries. More recently, consumers are using GPS for direction in their cars, and new mobile and handheld devices are being developed for consumers use where ever they go. Most consumers have used maps to location directions from their desktops using Mapquest and/or Google maps for travel related applications. Users are using applications in related to real estate to find values of property in regions of interest. Social networks and MashUps are using map to overlay data of interest creating new applications and methods of viewing data. Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth are starting to show the power of GPS in the number of applications that are rapidly being developed.
Nokia has recently included their map with GPS phone with location based value added services. Users can now track location and where about over period of time of GPS mobile phones on a map. Consumer will be able to get location based information such as travel related information: restaurants, movies, hotels, etc. Projections of mobile devices being equipped with GPS are going to represent close to 40% of devices and above 80M in next five years. The digital map makers are going to developing their own treasure as the number of applications
and users only increases.
Tags : Garmin, Google Earth, Google Maps, Location Based, Navteq, nokia, TeleAtlas, TomTom