Jun 23 2005
Obstacles in the Mobile Platform
Russell Beattie is moderating the panel Obstacles in the Mobile Platform at Where 2.0 next week. I think the panel member choices are great…mostly carrier, plus a biz dev guy who has been dealing with carriers…it should be interesting. Being in a startup doing LBS product development I’m interested, but can’t justify the cost of the ticket to get in.
Russ put out a call for questions for the panel. Here is a set that I think, if put to the panel, might be good…
Mixed Messages: What’s the breakdown between “LBS Apps”, and apps that use LBS as one tool in creating a useful product? Where are the carriers focused and how will this change over time (this is important, because it may impact whether an app gets on the deck)?
Getting on the Deck: Tons of developers out there hawking ideas and prototypes – what does it take to get “on the deck?”
Premium Fees: Will carriers charge premiums to consumers to ‘turn on’ LBS? Will carriers be looking to charge a premium revenue share percentage to developers?
Deployment Delays: The roadway is littered with LBS pioneers that ran out of runway as ‘unofficial’ LBS deployment schedules came and went. What are the prospects for 2005 and 2006?
Limited Handset Availability: It’s probably a safe bet that the first phones to support LBS will be on the high end. When will LBS capability reach a broad set of handsets (in the US it’s starting to broaden on Nextel, but what about others)? When does the GSM world enter in a meaningful way?
Content: Map content, and queries to geoservers are expensive. Map images don’t display all that well on small screens. Elevation data returned from handsets is horrible. What can/are carriers doing to help with this?