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GPS LBS

Maybe this year..

I have very happy memories of attending 3GSM in 2001 in Cannes with the newly formed Autodesk Location Services, this year 3GSM is a much bigger show, but very few of us in the suite at the Carlton Hotel in 2001 would have thought that in 2007 we would still be waiting for Location Based Services to take off.

3GSM LogoThere have been as we all know issues with the usability of applications, reliability of mobile networks and poor data rates and the problem I have often commented upon the “walled garden” mentality of the mobile operators.

This year at 3GSM we are seeing the handset manufactures beginning to side-step the networks with Nokia’s announcement of the their recently acquired Smart2go mapping software as a free download as well as a major component of the new GPS equipped N95, and RIM”s new Blackberry 8800 again with GPS and its own mapping application.

The networks are not out of the picture quite yet, I’m interested to seen what the Vodafone/Google Maps agreement actually looks like, but whatever else happens it does finally seem that there is a momentum building behind mobile mapping applications, not LBS yet, but progress at last.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

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