GPS Tech Review

The most disruptive technology since the invention of the lightbulb.

• The Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans.
• Americans spend an average of 19 hours per week online.
• Text messaging has more than doubled in just two years:
  Mobile users average 38 messages per day, compared to 16 in 2007.
• LOCiMOBILE passed the 500K sub mark in 84 countries for GPS Tracking
• Twitter exceeds 800 million search queries per day
• More than 70 percent of mobile users credit their phone with helping them to maintain their social relationships, up from 64 percent in ‘08.
• About 18 million Americans are active users of mobile banking services
• With an estimated 800K mobile customers, Citi ranks fifth in mobile banking and is the 11^th most popular App Store finance application.
• Verizon indicated that 35% of its retail postpaid customers had smartphones or multimedia.
• Smartphone growth remains 40% YoY and should grow in excess of 20% CAGR for the next five years.
• Wireless data represents ~34% of total ARPU (average revenue per user)
• While messaging continues to grow, AT&T showed much better growth than Verizon.
• AT&T: 53.2% of their 67 million postpaid subs have integrated devices, up from 36.3% a year ago, with a record 3.2 million iPhones sold in the quarter.

Nearly 90 percent of U.S. households now have a cell phone – a huge number and clear paradigm shift that is only eclipsed only by the number of global mobile phone service subscriptions eclipsing 5 billion this month. Of that number, there are now more than 500 million active 3G data subscriptions.

Curiously with that growth, the voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated, even though more households each year – 2 million a day globally – are disconnecting their landlines in favor of cellphones.

Instead of talking on their cellphones, people using the data applications found on iPhone, BlackBerry, Samsung, Microsoft, Android and other smart-phones to browse the Internet, listen to music, watch television, play games, send e-mail and text messages.

The number of text messages sent per user increased by nearly 50 percent nationwide last year, according to the CTIA, the wireless industry association. And for the first time in our history, the amount of data in text, e-mail messages, streaming video, music and other services on mobile devices surpassed the amount of voice data used in cell phone calls.

By example, the multi-platform LOCiMOBILE personal location people finding apps; GPS Tracking and Tracking have surpassed 500,000 users in more than 84 countries in just a few months. The velocity of the apps distribution made possible by; the introduction of third party applications and their adoption by consumers which has driven device sales, application downloads, wireless subscriptions and an explosive investment in wireless technologies.

10 years ago, only 720 million people in the world had mobile phone service. Today, there are more subscribers than that in China alone. The number of mobile broadband subscriptions is anticipated to reach 3.4 billion by 2015, with a total number of connected mobile devices around the world to climb to 50 billion by 2020.

How many Facebook friends do you have? To put your friend count in perspective, the average user has 130. Facebook’s official stats page is full of little gems like this, and more staggering stats, such as the fact that people spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook, while the current active official user count now stands at over 500 million.

 With a LOCiMOBILE GPS Tracking App you can access your FaceBook “Friends” and locate them with a single click…opt in permission required of course.

The Wave’s touchscreen device has a 3.3-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz processor, 5MP camera, 2GB internal memory, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The display is said to be “incredibly” vibrant and removes all outdoor visibility issues.Samsung also announced plans to release variations of its Bada OS for tablet PCs and TV set-top boxes.

The Bada OS has the apps menu, contacts, and calling features always pinned on the home screen, and widgets are available for news, weather and more. Multi-touch is standard.

Bada is still in its initial stages, with only 150 applications so far available to Wave users. Samsung says, however, that it is awaiting certification of hundreds of applications to be included in the Bada application market. The GTX Corp LOCiMOBILE suite of personal location apps potentially among them.

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that of the two-thirds of U.S. hospitals surveyed; only 1.5% of them have a comprehensive electronic-medical records system. This despite substantial Federal stimulus funding and a 2011 “Meaningful Mandate” usage goal… Physician resistance was noted by the study researchers as a critical factor for the delay in their participation.

Doctors have been heard to say that they do not see a financial ROI for the transition to digital and expect significant maintenance costs for compliance and so have procrastinated in the migration from analog charting to retrievable digital records.

With digital protocols, personal medical records could be instantly available to emergency and trauma professionals that they might provide informed treatments reducing the risk for miss-diagnosis and procedures that could be in conflict with existing conditions and drug regimens.

The opportunity to digitize and securely access your own and family medical records is currently available from Code Amber. With their EMtag it will only take a few minutes to provide the assurance that should the inconceivable happen and a family member requires the services of Emergency Medical professionals that their medical history and special needs will be readily available insuring timely, proper treatment.

Given the reticence to invest in providing patients with their digital medical records, it would be smarter to have an EMTag and not need it, then to need the Tag and not have it.

Two-way GPS has helped the lives of thousands by guiding emergency services to the precise location of people in need of immediate attention. Getting there quickly however is only the first step. That’s why everyone needs an EMtag. While GPS Tracking can answer the “where” question, the Code Amber EMTag knows the answers to the “who, what and when” questions that first responders to emergencies need to know to provide informed treatment. 

GPS Tech Review: What are the GTX Corp business models and its channels of distribution?

Mr. Bertagna: We marshal our extensive GPS expertise, integrate our patented technology then identify an enterprise partner entrenched in their vertical market and work together to provide a proprietary solution via licensing and/or subscriptions. We have recently secured several licensing contracts. One with Aetrex Worldwide, a leading shoe company that is embedding our technology within pedorthotic shoes marketed to the caregivers of the elderly afflicted with dementia. Another is with MNX, a specialized logistics company that will employ our technology to monitor life science and high-valued asset shipments. We also market a suite of personal location GPS apps directly to the consumer through our subsidiary LOCiMOBILE. The GPS Tracking app has been downloaded more than 450,000 times in 83 countries. The iPhone version of the app has recently taken the number 2 position on the iTunes Top Grossing List. App awareness and uptake streams virally through social media marketing, an area in which we are clearly achieving our objectives. Global Trek markets GPS devices, tracking software and portal solutions to domestic and international businesses.

GPS Tech Review: Can you tell us about the patented GPS Shoes?

Mr. Bertagna: We came together when Elizabeth Smart was abducted in 2002. A group of us conceived of a shoe with an embedded tracking device powered by GPS. Personal Location footwear would certainly protect kids and their families from a similar tragedy by instantly spotting them on a digital map. We immediately focused our resources on building a GPS shoe company and securing patents, but reality brought us to an early cross road. We had to decide if we were going to either be a technology company or a shoe company – not both. We elected the technology path and came up with our embedded licensing model. The founders then set out to identify strategic partners that had strong footwear brand identities. From those relationships we could leverage their platforms, core competencies, distribution channels and customers with our unique value proposition. GTX Corp has found that partner; Aetrex Worldwide. With 20 patents and patents-pending our IP portfolio continues to grow. Of no less significance, our first production run of the GPS Shoe will be available 4Q 2010.

GPS Tech Review: Could you elaborate on the demand for your GPS applications and give us the trends that you are seeing in the market place?

Mr. Bertagna: There is a greater awareness for GPS apps as demonstrated by the increase in downloads and inquiries LOCiMOBILE receives daily. The demand for personal location apps is growing evidenced by the 400,000+ downloads in 82 countries of our GPS Tracking app. Clearly, more people want an answer to their “where is….” questions and GTX Corp is in the “where is….” answer business. Where is my child, where is my father with Alzheimer’s, where is my pet, where is my high-value asset?  Our biggest challenge is the steep learning curve – Educating our customers about the technology’s current capabilities, limitations and future potential. The movie myths and our real world reality have a bridge to cross on the information highway to ubiquity.

GTX Corp, developer of the patented GPS shoe, will begin shipping devices to its licensee; Aetrex Worldwide for retail sales through its www.foot.com and GTX Corp’s www.gpsshoe.com sites. Availability is currently scheduled to coincide with the National Alzheimer Association Memory Walks this fall. Those wishing to purchase a pair of ‘Ambulators” should post their interest on the foot.com site for follow up email messages.

The GPS Shoe transmits the wearer’s location to a monitoring station. From there the wearer’s location is Google mapped and viewable on a computer, smartphone or web-enabled handheld through a secure subscriber portal. 

Elopement and wandering often have tragic outcomes. If not found quickly, the afflicted will succumb to exposure, foul play or accidents. Today, nearly six million Americans are afflicted with the incurable disease placing the burden of care on nearly ten million family and professional caregivers. While there is yet no cure for the disease, there is now a path to some peace of mind.

 Samsung’s Bada OS may become a retail tsunami if its Wave smartphone does its thing … It has apps, it has widgets, it has a great touch-screen with a Super AMOLED display and it multitasks…all in addition to being a phone.

Multitasking isn’t one of the leading features that Samsung is promoting with Bada, but not only can you do it – It’s simple. Just hold down the central diamond-shaped button for a second or two and the multitask menu pops up. Thanks to the Wave’s 1GHz Hummingbird, it can run a handful of apps – even GPS Tracking apps – without any performance dip, and you can switch between them in seconds, lag-freeThe display shows all the main processes that are currently running on the Wave, each with a little red circle in the corner which lets you close the app down. There’s also a button to close all running apps in one sweep, and a shortcut to return to the home screen view without closing any apps – this one’s great if you want to check up on your Twitter feed quickly while checking out an app or game or answering a call…With the ability to flip between the foreground and background the actual differences may appear
to disappear.