ABI Research predicts the location-based services industry will turn into a $3.3 billion market worldwide by 2013, reports Silcon Alley Insider.
Location-based mobile advertising “holds a lot of promise,” notes ABI analyst Dominique Bonte. But “the current reality” suggests licensing and subscription revenue-sharing — like Loopt’s recent deal with Verizon Wireless — the most likely near-term revenue streams.
Whether today’s location-based mobile social networks — like Loopt, Whrrl, etc. — will be able to outlast more established social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and maybe LinkedIn, once location becomes a feature on those platforms.
When you already have several hundred friends on a social network, it’s a lot easier to add a feature like location than it is to add several hundred friends on a network whose main attraction is location, notes Silcon Alley Insider.
Other Location-Aware Apps for the iPhone (and other platforms) include:
- Loopt - free: A Virtual Earth map allows you to see both friends and Yelp search results together.
- AdMob: Mobile advertising that targets the audience and device you want
- Funambol: Open platform design to push location aware ads and sync contacts with other phones, webmail systems & email clients.
- Platial - free: Search or browse millions of Platial geobits - from food to arts and culture to activism to history to recreation and beyond.
- ShoZu - Free: One-click uploading of camera phone videos and pictures to over 30 online social networks, blogs and photo sites. Can geo-tag your photos and videos.
- Kyte Mobile Producer for iPhone: Instantly broadcast pictures as you take them, create slideshows from your iPhone’s picture gallery and chat with your audience real-time.
- Ontela: Brings together a user’s mobile device, PC, and favorite online image services.
- Where - free: Released by Ulocate on Sprint last year, it makes it easy for developers to build location-aware widgets.
- Omnifocus - $19.99: It will use your location to help you create location-based to-do list.
- Urban Spoon - free: A restaurant picker
- Twitteriffic, Twinkle and Twittelator - free: Post Twitters and follow people. Twittelator lets you send a link to a map of your location and has a “Twitter 911″ feature.
- NearPics - free: A location-aware photo browser. It uses your location to select local photos from Google’s Panoramio service.
- Whrrl - free: Like Loopt, is shows friends and businesses on the same map but adds more browser functionality (showing places reviewed by friends).
Apple’s next significant release of the iPhone software will activate background push notifications, as well as enhanced GPS functionality, says BetaNews. Tweaks to the iPhone GPS code, may allow for truer navigation and allow developers to get around the restrictions blocking applications from running in the background on the device. The rumored 2.1 software release is expected around September.
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