Applications
Location data adds a new realm to what applications can offer and recommend as well as how you can be marketed and advertised to. Mapping, entertainment, dining, and check-in applications increasingly use smartphones’ GPS technology. A wide variety of entertainment and dining applications, including include Yelp, UrbanSpoon, and Citysearch, use your location to suggest restaurants, bars and other businesses near you. Popular applications like Twitter can share your general location, such as Seattle, WA. Third-party applications like Twitpic can include the specific location where a photo was uploaded. Four out of five cell phones will integrate GPS technology by the end of 2011, according to the analyst firm iSuppli. The use of personal GPS technology and location-based application is expected to grow dramatically thanks to the popularity of smartphones.
Personal smartphone GPS applications can be categorized in many ways, but for the purposes of this project, we are grouping them into five broad categories: Personal safety, personal navigation devices, entertainment and recreation, augmented reality, and check-in services. In all five categories, what makes the smartphone GPS applications unique compared to their competitor products is the presence of the smartphone as an always on, always proximate, network-connected device with multimedia capture and display. Â The competing products and technologies may, and frequently do perform better within their specific context, but do not have the advantages and opportunities that the converged smartphone platform provides.
