Survey finds 50% of cellular users want LBS

BOSTON -- While application developers and the service provider community are focusing their resources on the deployment and marketing of infotainment services, "What Mobile Consumers Want," a new report from Strategy Analytics, indicates that the voice of the consumer -- and consumer demand for more practical services such as step-by-step directions -- is being overlooked. This information emanates from the Wireless Internet Applications (WIA) Service of the Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice, and is based on its latest end-user survey analysis.

"Operators continue to miss out on the real revenue potential for location offerings, like step-by-step directions, as they myopically pursue the killer entertainment application." said Nitesh Patel, author of the analysis and a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics. He also said that interest in location-based services has increased from 37 percent to 45 percent since 2001, while 38 percent expressed demand for making purchases via mobile phone.

Implementations of these services by operators have been hindered by both technical and marketing difficulties, such as poor levels of accuracy for location-based services, as well as the lack of a widely accepted payment solution for m-payment merchants. "Additionally, operators need to take a leap of faith and work with point-of-sale developers to create a payment mechanism," Patel said.

David Kerr, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice, added, "The encouraging news for European operators is that levels of interest in comparable applications improved on the bleak results obtained in our 2001 end-user survey; and demand for entertainment-centric applications, such as multimedia clips and photo messaging, also increased significantly."

Wireless internet specialist

Patel is a specialist in wireless Internet applications (WIA) and is responsible for analyzing and reporting on developments in the global wireless data and computing arena. He has studied and written reports on both the wireless internet applications and internet business strategies market areas, including wireless gaming, mobile commerce, wireless information services, business-to-business e-commerce, telemetry, wireless computing devices and wireless portals.

He has been with Strategy Analytics since 1999 and has participated in a number of important mobile marketing research projects for clients across the mobile data value-chain. Patel graduated from Imperial College, London, in June 1999, with a BSc in Chemistry and Management.