You can run, but you can’t hide–unless you turn off your phone: LBS are growing

Now is certainly the time for technological puberty—social networking sites have demonstrated enormous growth spurts over the past few years, and the same is predicted for users of location-based services (LBS).

LBS subscribers are able to broadcast their exact location or find  locations of other subscribers via Wi-Fi, mobile phones and satellites.  Besides the familiar GPS service (stands for Global Positioning System), LBS can also allow friends to track each other’s whereabouts.  This technology is extremely cool and fun to use (or pretty creepy depending on the circumstances), and users are expected to grow from 41 million users in 2008 to 95.7 million users this year according to an article from Gartner Newsroom.  More importantly to LBS providers, this exponential growth over the course of one year is predicted to rake in $2.2 billion worth of revenue up from the $998.3 million of last year.

North America is the leader in this market: “Gartner analysts said LBS market dynamics vary by region. For example, North America is the largest market due to mobile carriers’ strong efforts in navigation services and family-safety solutions.” Yes, Americans do love their GPS systems. Why think?  It’s amazing to think about how far we’ve come from the ancient GPS system–a.k.a. the stars.

GPS is obviously popular and undoubtedly useful, and other LBS services like Loopt and Verizon’s Chaperone are quickly catching fire.  So yes, kids may find themselves under a closer watch and adults can create better networking opportunities with LBS, but there is also a great marketing angle to these human-tracking services.

With a decrease in costs for the services, public access will increase to establish an innovative marketing platform similar to what people have been doing with Twitter.  Celebrities like Ellen Degeneres and Shaquille O’Neal have used Twitter to broadcast ticket giveaway locations, and  LBS will allow companies to use similar marketing tactics.  People can have a more personal experience because as subscribers they can tailor their LBS services to favorite brands and companies.  Mobile phone companies partnered with a third-party company gives subscribers an advantage in knowing about location-based store promotions and initiates campaigns to boost customer involvement.

Japan actually has a law requiring GPS in phones since 2007, and I don’t think the U.S. is far behind in fully embracing the satellite technology.  Just having the Internet on your phone was once a rare luxury, and now it is safe to call it the norm.  I do think the number of LBS subscribers will grow as predicted, and customers and companies alike will enjoy the benefits.