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GPS Article in Wireless Week

An interesting article highlighted the cover of Wireless Week in the latest print edition - click here for article. The article, written by Brad Smith, was titled GPS: the Mobile Way.  The article takes a stab at challenging the in car navigation business, saying that navigation from a GPS enabled mobile cell phone is better.  A few points that highlight the argument include the cost – it is cheaper to run and update navigation apps on a cell phone than embedded.   Also, cell phone based navigation systems are not powered on the handset, rather they are networked application which eliminate the need to buy expensive cards to update the systems database.

It was a good and thorough article; however it excluded comments from Sprint Nextel who has led the way with GPS on cell phones.  A major focus was on TeleNav, and there was no mention of Garmin, Rand McNally, MapQuest and others who are in the space.  Did these guys not return calls for comment?  I wonder. 

Some interesting highlights include:

• Qualcomm is stating that they have shipped over 200 million handsets with embedded GPS via their gpsONE technology.
• Ken Hyers of ABI Research says that there are 12 million subscribers worldwide utilizing GPS on their cell phone.  He expects that number to reach 315 million in 5 years.
• IMS Research is predicting a 40% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenues attributed to cellular based GPS applications.
• Cingular, who recently launched TeleNavs navigation application has been pleased with the results - "Based on our plans, we are ahead of our sales expectations," Laura Johnson senior director of enterprise solutions.
• Verizon is claiming that their pricing model for VZ Navigator is one of the reasons that it is so popular with subscribers.  Verizon offers the service for $2.99 for 24 hours of usage.
• Rob Rovetta of Qualcomm thinks that we will be seeing more social networking applications in the future…buddy finders and date finders.

Carilion Clinic launches TeleNav Track

Carilion Clinic, West Virginia's leading health-care provider, announced that they are using TeleNav Track from TeleNav to empower their personnel to cut response times.  We all know that during a medical emergency, time is critical.  From the press release:

" With TeleNav Track, Carilion is now able to pinpoint emergency medical service (EMS) providers down to the section they are standing by at the speedway. This feature of TeleNav Track has reduced emergency response times to around one minute from the time a call is received to when the team arrives on the scene. Additionally, Carilion uses TeleNav Track's online reporting tool that can show where all team members have been throughout the event. "

Looks like a good implementation of LBS to me.