Mark Cattini, president and CEO of location based technology vendor MapInfo expects global revenues to grow by about 10 percent, as the company diversifies from its traditional area offering location-based information to emergency services and security groups through to customer analytics, and commercial location-based services.
"Most of the commercial interest in mobile commerce is based around special information, where am I in relation to the nearest restaurant, or to a buddy or friend you are trying to contact," Cattini explained. "We have been working with Vodafone and Siemens to develop a commercial location based platform using core technology we developed for military and emergency service applications."
According to Cattini a "night guide" restaurant locator service is already available in Germany, with similar services set to go live in Spain and the UK within coming months.
In Australia, MapInfo is working on location information services for emergency services groups, such as the Rural Fire Service (RFS) in NSW and ACT Emergency Services Bureau (ESB). However, Cattini said there were also still high levels of interest in commercial applications.
"There has continued to be a lot of interest in geo-specific products but the reality is that this market has been a little slow along with the wireless industry in general affected by the slow down across the tech sector," Cattini said.
David Hendy, head of business development at Unico computer systems pointed out that although some location-based services, have been slower to develop, the market for interactive location-based applications has significant promise in Australia.
"In terms of what we are doing we haven't seen a slow down in this area. One of our key clients - Telstra, is seeing considerable success with its Dial a Coke and parking meter trials," Hendy said.
In an attempt to take the service level beyond that of the traditional parking meter, applications developed by Unico not only replace the need for coinage when parking, but also warn the user by SMS when their car space is about to expire.
"One of the most critical aspects of we are seeing in terms of the development of mobile commerce is that it needs to be very convenient," Hendy said. "A next step is to introduce services that can be accessed using SMS and packet data services, so that people don't have to alternate between lifting the phone to the their ears to hear instructions and moving the phone so they can enter information or make their selection. Having SMS and packet data based m-commerce transactions provide greater customer convenience as transactions are completed without having to move the phone to listen to instructions; all the information is presented visually."
Hendy believes the next phase of growth for mobile commerce will be driven largely by the SMS-savvy youth market, and applications designed to enable access to products such as time and or location sensitive information and the latest music releases. Although he concedes that pricing, billing and margin issues have yet to be fully resolved, Hendy points out that Telstra and Coca-Cola Amatil's Dial-a-Coke trials show that consumers are content to pay a premium for additional convenience.
"There's a whole range of different pricing scenarios that operators will find as time goes on, often there are multiple partners involved so there is fair bit of complexity in terms of how the various parties split the revenue and get paid," Hendy said.
