South of the border, down PLS way
Mobile telephony has been by far the most dynamic telecom sector in Latin America. In early 2009, there were about 5 million 3G subscribers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. GTXCorp, a leading developer of Personal Location Services has expanded it relationships in the area to take advantage of pent up demand for location aware mobile applications. Prepaid services stimulated subscription increases by making mobile phones available to millions of low-income users, once excluded by monthly payments and credit checks. Mobile penetration has reached about 80%, well above the world average, which was about 58% in early 2009. Several countries, including Argentina, Jamaica, Uruguay, and Venezuela have passed the 100% penetration threshold. The enormous popularity of peer-to-peer and personalized SMS, personalized push-based content by subscriber location information will be a key driver towards mass adoption of PLS applications. Demand for child tracking, caregivers of dementia victims, friend finder, mobile blogging, location-based games, mobile matchmaking, and location-enabled 411 directory assistance lead the applications offered. Analysts from Frost & Sullivan stated that the mobile LBS market covering 13 Asia-Pac countries earned revenues of US$383.6 million in 2007. F&S expects this market to reach US$2.8 billion by end-2013, at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 39.3 percent (2007-2013). One should not minimize the impact of the iTunes App store created to service the Apple iPhone. The universality of the platform and the ease of download and payments have made the App Store a marketing phenomenon. Certainly, a market driver of PLS everywhere.
Location Based Services November 9th, 2009
