Garmin story too...
Perspectives on LBS — Late November Newsletter
GPS is the ubiquitous location component of LBS, but what about systems that tout better accuracy? Thanks to nearly 10 years of nationwide advertising from OnStar and most recently, portable navigation device manufacturers, GPS is a household word. But with the satellite system's limitations in urban areas and indoors, will upstart companies start to grab market share? Or will their offerings remain complementary technology?
Nov 28, 2007
By:Kevin Dennehy
GPS World
LBS Alternatives to GPS
Although GPS remains the number-one technology in terms of worldwide use and ubiquitous coverage, existing technologies like GPS and cell tower triangulation fail to provide positioning of sufficient quality to make LBS useful and mainstream. These technologies lack accuracy, speed and reliability in urban areas and indoor environments.
Consequently, various companies continue to promote location-based services that do not use satellites for their primary means of location. Boston-based Skyhook Wireless, for example, is using 802.11 radio on mobile devices to deliver positioning—something the company hopes to do worldwide.
"There has been a lot of narrow thinking about location. People believe GPS is the only location technology, but [our technology] is complementary," said Jed Rice, Skyhook vice president, market development. "People want positioning technology that will work in an office, not a mile away.
With Skyhook's technology, client devices such as laptops, PDAs, and even Wi-Fi-ready phones can become virtual LBS units. Some say the accuracy of Wi-Fi positioning doesn't equal that of GPS, especially where Wi-Fi access points are scarce, such as in suburban areas. However, the company has found success over Assisted GPS in urban environments and indoors through several tests with wireless carriers in Paris and major U.S. cities, Rice said.
Wi-Fi positioning has advantages over GPS and A-GPS: it has no line-of-sight requirements, and it can be used indoors or out. This type of technology does not suffer from multipath problems in urban canyons. There is no latency problem, because access points identify themselves frequently, or on request from a client.
Companies such as Skyhook are looking to take advantage of more than 100 million Wi-Fi devices that don't have GPS. Even those that are equipped with GPS will benefit from the indoor availability and urban area accuracy, the company believes. Overall, Skyhook's ideal customers will be manufacturers of handsets and other wireless devices, who may be looking for a more accurate system indoors.
Another company, TruePosition, provides hybrid location systems that incorporate Cell ID, Enhanced Cell ID, Uplink Time Difference of Arrival, Angle of Arrival, and A-GPS for LBS.
A third contender, S5 Wireless, offers its wide-area wireless location and telemetry application, which has been tested on the company's LBS network in Salt Lake City. S5 Wireless says it can grab 9-meter accuracy indoors, and 14 meters outside. The company claims its recent testing shows accuracy that is similar to GPS-based handsets for enhanced 911 location.
One opportunity for the company's RF location tags may be the location of calls from VoIP E-911 devices.
Who Won in the Garmin-TomTom-Tele Atlas Triangle?
Since we publish this column twice a month, I didn't have the chance last time to talk about the recent hoopla around TomTom's $4.2 billion counter to Garmin's counteroffer for digital mapmaker Tele Atlas. Garmin subsequently withdrew its offer for Tele Atlas and inked a new deal with Navteq through 2015.
Who's the big winner? In a way, everyone involved.
Athough Tele Atlas's shares fell on the news that Garmin no longer wanted to pursue the map giant, it received a huge offer from TomTom. As GPS World reported, Tele Atlas went from TomTom's original 2-billion-euro offer last summer to a $3.35 billion counteroffer from Garmin. Then the company's executives got the new TomTom offer within a week, which they seemed to like more (for obvious reasons). Not a bad week.
After saying it would not pursue Tele Atlas, Garmin saw its stock shoot up. TomTom also saw its shares go up.
Who knows? Garmin also may be gloating that its PND rival TomTom had to pony up more money for Tele Atlas. However, TomTom, despite paying a high price, is now set with digital maps for the foreseeable future.
Some analysts have said that Garmin has to position itself to be ready when—or if—the PND market slows. Nokia is well positioned to exploit the handheld market with its $8.1 billion offer for Tele Atlas's bitter rival, Chicago-based Navteq.
Thilo Koslowski, Gartner's ICT Manufacturing Advisory Service vice president, said that a purchase for Tele Atlas is a windfall for the European company, but how good a deal would it be for the buyer? He believes that the PND will eventually be trumped by the handset as the LBS consumer platform of choice. Any market plan that doesn't deal with this concept, he believes, is short-sighted.
Though the deal is dwarfed by the Nokia-Navteq extravaganza, perhaps TomTom's offer for Tele Atlas may have been too high even for Garmin—and common sense took over. In addition, Garmin's deal with Navteq ended the speculation on Wall Street that there could be a huge bidding war for Tele Atlas. |
