Location Services: Missing the Mark?

By Ian, on March 31st, 2010

compass location services

Been in prison for the last six months? While you were inside, Location-Based Services (LBS) became the new cool. Some of this new generation are status games (Foursquare, Gowalla); some of them are about local reviews and services (Yelp, Rummble, Poynt); there’s probably a bunch of others that haven’t registered on my radar. There’s also maps and routefinders, of course.

I’ve installed and mucked about with some of these. Here are my 140-character reviews.

Foursquare: Get badges for ‘checking in’ to places. Looks cheesy to others. Scared of ever becoming a mayor.

Gowalla: Not tried it. From what I see, it’s more featurey than 4sq but with fewer users. Otherwise same thing.

Yelp: Local reviews of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Didn’t have much in my locality. Harden’s better for reviews.

Rummble: iPhone and Android apps only: great way to rule out 80% of your potential audience.

Poynt: Local cinemas, restaurants, businesses. Directory rather than reviews. Actually quite useful, esp. for cinema listings. BBerry and iPhone only.

Latitude: ‘See where your friends are right now!’ says Google’s page. But only the four who have signed up. And uhm… why?

So not overly impressed, then. These services face a few problems:

Low User Numbers

User-generated review and location applications that only have a few users are pretty useless. They should partner with e.g. Time Out to seed the database. Arguably, Time Out should buy the technology for a pittance once some of these services are close to going bust and then make their own on the cheap. (Time Out currently only has an iPhone app, so loses 85% of potential users, but at least they got it sponsored).

Platform Dependence

A reminder from an earlier post (these are worldwide figures):

Overall, Nokia has 38% of mobile device market share. Samsung has 20% and LG 10%. The fourth and fifth place are taken by SonyEricsson and Motorola.
If you restrict the sample to smartphones, Nokia is again way out front with 39% market share. Then it’s RIM (Blackberry) with 21%. Apple has 15% and HTC (Android) just 5%.
Smartphones represent only 13% of the mobile device market. On the other hand, 95% of phones can do WAP and every phone can now do SMS. Over 90% of phones are capable of 2.5G or faster transmission speeds now, so this isn’t the WAP you remember from the nineties. 53% of the phones in use world-wide can do Java apps.

You’re definitely better off making a mobile website that degrades gracefully. Making iPhone your platform priority is stupid for a consumer application.

Non-Existent Use Cases

How often do you want reviews of local restaurants? Answer: never. You ask people you know or you tried them out ages ago. How about if those reviews come from total strangers with no credentials? Answer: less than never.

You quite often hear this in pitches: “Imagine you’ve just got into town and you’re dying for some Peking Crispy Duck. But how do you find the best place for that?”

How often does that actually happen? And why don’t you ask the people you’re there to meet or a hotel concierge?

Gimmickiness

Badges, really?

Meet the New Uncool

Planet mobile has always been susceptible to hype. How long have we been reading about the mobile Internet? Watching TV on your phone? It’s made great strides in the last three years with all-you-can-eat tariffs and more usable devices, but it’s still basically a young teenager. If you combine this hype with a bunch of gadget-fanatic geeks then what you end up with is funding for gimmicky, useless services that work on less than a fifth of people’s phones.

Location-Based Services have existed for years, of course. And they are extremely useful. It’s just that they rarely get any popular press. Developed by deeply unglamorous people like SAP, the real use cases are mostly B2B and corporate B2C.

Logistics/Supply Chain: Where is that delivery and how long will it take to get here? Who are my most efficient drivers? Why has Tony taken a diversion through Canterbury on his trip from Brighton to London? When do I need to order more sprockets so that they’re ready when the widgets come through?

Couriers: We’ve got a job on Oxford Street. Where’s the nearest bike?

Service Engineers: A pipe in Richmond has a leak. Who’s the best person to send? Where is the nearest place to get the part they need?

Sales: Your nearest store is here. How are you fixed for a presentation at 3.00? I need to visit every baker in London – how can I find them and what’s the best route?

picture credit: almarmon