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Vodafone has signed a deal with Siemens that will allow the company to offer location-based services to customers in Ireland and around the world.
The two companies said on Tuesday that an agreement had been reached that will see Siemens supply a global location enabling platform to Vodafone Global Products and Services, a subsidiary of the Vodafone group. The value of the deal was not released.
The system is currently being rolled out in the UK and Germany and should hit other European markets, including Ireland, in the coming months.
The location enabling platform will allow Vodafone, the world's largest mobile network operator, and third party developers to create location sensitive applications. Examples of such location based services (LBS) include, mapping applications, "friends-finders," and "find my nearest..." services. It is thought that location sensitive advertising and even emergency services will be integrated into Vodafone's LBS network.
In addition to the position of the mobile device, Vodafone will offer application providers a range of value-added "geo-toolbox" facilities, such as maps, addresses and routing information, provided by MapInfo Corporation. The addition of these extra services means that Vodafone provides all of the core information that developers will need to deploy applications.
Vodafone says that another key feature of the platform is its ability to support Vodafone customers when roaming. The company claims that when the service goes live, customers will be able to access the same location enabled services when travelling in other Vodafone networks, as they do in their home networks.
Location based services have been discussed in the industry for years both by network operators and by developers who see an incredible opportunity to deploy new services to consumers. The rollout of LBS is part of Vodafone's overall plan to derive a greater portion of its revenues through lucrative data services as its average revenue per user figures begin to stagnate.
Industry analysts have been divided on how they see the market unfolding. Last year Strategy Analytics said revenues for LBS in Western Europe would hit USD9 billion by 2005. This figure, though exceptional, contrasts sharply with what the Strategis Group said when it forecast revenues of USD32.9 billion over the same time period.
There are a number of reasons for the conflicting estimates. Some analysts say that privacy concerns and technical bugs will keep take-up of the service low in initial years. But most analysts agree that LBS, in combination with 3G (UMTS), will create a powerful atmosphere for the roll-out of data applications, where consumers will experience rich content that is delivered in time and in places that will have the greatest significance to consumers.
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