Interesting post from Raging Bull about Nokia's strategy for mobile positioning technology versus Cellpoint's.
ragingbull.com
By: apekkane
Reply To: 870 by cdma_67 Thursday, 1 Jun 2000 at 7:46 AM EDT
Post # of 875
Benefon Locus...
is a product of small Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Benefon (www.benefon.com, the site is pretty cool, turn your loudspeakers on), which is known by its innovative products but it really have got serious problems in all other fields of business (marketing, production etc. )
Anyway, Locus' positioning technology is gsm based and is not created by Benefon. It has been created by Radiolinja Oy which is #2 mobile operator in Finland (subsidiary of Helsinki Telephone HEPEV.HE). I have met Radiolinja's CTO and he claimed that their method is more accurate than Cellpoint's....but, BUT:
a) it needs a "minor" software and hardware modification to mobile phone and this is what Benefon has done in the Locus phone.
b) it is not a installation ready product but is initially built to Radiolinja's network. They might try to do it in the future.
c) CTO said that they try to affect to new WAP standard so that their system could work in all new WAP phones fulfilling the new WAP standards. This is something I regard highly improbable. (Anyway, I have also Radiolinja shares, just for the case :)
A company called Modelsoft is somehow involved to this development (www.modelsoft.fi). They may be the software platform provider even thought they said in their site that this positioning technology is theirs. Radiolinja's CTO claimed the opposite. What's the truth, who knows?!
Anyway, this gsm positioning technology and the companies related to it, doesn't create significant threat to CLPT. They are small, local and the most meaningful drawback is the modifications needed to mobile terminal.
OK, and then some other positioning news from Finland. Our business weekly Tekniikka&Talous (Technolgy&Economy) had a special number devoted to positioning technology. A very interesting article indeed. The most significant piece of news was the Nokia's marketing manager's inverview. There she said among other things the following:
a) Accuracy is not the main issue. Often, even the cell location information is enought (good for CLPT)
b) Standards are being crated and Nokia is creating and following them. Espcially, E-OTD and new WAP/WTA standard propositions were mentioned. Their current E-OTD system reaches about 150m accuracy in the very downtown and about 250 in general urban area. But this needs a major software update to network base stations and apperentely some hardware as well (or at least a spesific kind of base stations). This is of course a kind of threat to CLPT and their proprietary technolgy. WAP/WAT standard positioning is not very urgent threat because it doesn't exist and no such phones are on the market yet...so the situation is quite similar with GSP enabled phones.
c) Most importantly they said that they are making it (E-OTD system) to product until 2001 ! This is very good news to CLTP => it can still have even 1 year time to strengthen its position in the field. During that time, they can create a unbeatable service package and the relative importance of the positioning technology will diminish. Peter Henricsson has already said that their system will handle all kind of positioning data regardless way it is generated. This is wise strategy: CLPT can offer one positioning solution that works in all phones, and when technology evolves they can follow the stream.
Important thing was that this article was among the first where Nokia revealed their gsm-positioning strategy. I have all the time feared that at any time they can release a killer application which would really make CLPT's situation more difficult. Fortunately, this is now very unlikely.
Ok, that's all at this time. Let's hope that CLPT could soon published several deal. That would also return share price to more reasonable levels.
apekkane
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