Location Based Services Get Focus

Reporting back from Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona this week, the Financial Times says that many of the players in the mobile market have a focus on Location Based Services. They give a glimpse of the plans Google, Apple, Nokia, Ericcson and Yahoo have:

Yahoo… put maps in focus with the launch of its OneConnect product, with another feature promising to show how far away friends are, and even plot their positioning on a map.

Google is also gaining traction for its Google Maps on mobile service, having secured partnerships with Vodafone, T-Mobile and the Apple iPhone.

Ericsson launched tools to help operators run location-based services on their networks, and Telmap, a company that provides whitelabel mapping services to mobile operators such as Vodafone, has just won a large deal with Orange Group.

The flurry of announcements shows the technology is maturing fast as global positioning system features are increasingly being embedded into handsets. Nokia, for example, is planning to include it in all its high-end, N-series smartphones. It expects to ship 35m GPS-enabled devices this year.<.blockquote>

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Handset makers find a route map to the future