In India, over 400 million mobile subscribers, with ~10millions new mobile subscribers every month is one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world but one of the last great frontiers for location – based services. Ever since mobiles have moved into the affordable bracket, there has been increasing demand for mobile VAS such as SMS based services, social networking, CRBT, downloadable contents, mobile gaming, mCommerce , mobile search etc. But what about LBS ?

What is LBS?

Location Based Services, based on GPS (Global Positioning System) technology is an informative service which provides location specific data to mobile users when moving from one place to another.It makes use of mobile application which helps mobile users track the right address.

Services offered

Many service providers such as BSNL, MTNL, Bharti Airtel in India have been providing location based services for few years now. Some of the services supported by LBS are:

  • Friend Finder – alerts subscribers when one of their friends in their buddy list is in close proximity to their location or vice versa
  • Mobile Yellow Pages – allows subscribers to get the location of the closest service point of their interest
  • City Sightseeing – provides subscribers with the location information of a place of interest – restaurant, museum, park etc
  • Maps and direction- provides navigation to find the right address
  • Locating place – malls, hospitals, movie halls, ATMs, banks etc
  • Receiving alerts – location based advertisments, about sale, traffic jam, road construction, road block etc
  • Resource tracking – fleet management , courier tracking etc
  • Chatting  – Location based chatting service to be in touch/meet people around that location

Even though there is good potential for LBS providers to tap the Indian market due to large number of mobile subscribers, getting mobile users to explore this service still remains challenging. Based on a survey conducted to find out the most desired Value added services in urban India, LBS (maps usage) is ranked low. This is because of low GPRS subcription, personal safety, lack of reliable and accurate data available, ever changing infrastructure due to road constructions, blocks, multiple names addressed for same location etc . LBS providers in India are hence currently lagging in the race in comparision to other mobile VAS providers.

Take a look what others in this industry have to say about status of LBS in India.  http://www.livemint.com/articles/2009/07/21220956/Locationbased-services-yet-to.html

What are your thoughts?