Mobile phones integrate/substitute GPS

Maceo

In the US, location technology in mobile phones will be mandatory for carriers to include in order to allow positioning people in an emergency ( http://www.fcc.gov/911/enhanced/ ). In the US, Japan, and Korea mobile services that use A-GPS (assisted GPS) are already working (e.g. http://www.snaptrack.com/experience/current_carriers.jsp ).

What do you guys think about location based services on a mobile phone? Might GPS enter the mainstream by converging with mobile phones (e.g. as A-Gps in the Motorola T720, http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6 ) and PDAs, like in the Garmin iQue ( http://www.brighthand.com/article/Garmin_iQue_3600_review )?

Dave

Location based services will happen shortly, especially with the more enhanced mobile phones like the P800's and latest Nokia's. A-GPS will take on and be of greater use more for mobile users than PDA users, as there are many more millions of mobile phone users out there, but it will probably take a good period of time for this to take off.

Maceo

From the specs I have seen, A-GPS is a mixed bag compared to GPS, though: accuracy is not quite as high as with a dedicated GPS receiver, but fixes happen faster (<10s) and reception indoors and in street "canyons" works as long as you have network reception.

At the moment, as a rough estimate from an online questionnaire I've found on the web, only 10% of mobile users have ever tried Cell-ID-based LBS, and less than 1% use it once every two weeks.

I wonder what the first really successful app may be that draws users towards LBS on next-gen, higher resolution technology (e.g., E-CGI or A-GPS). With Cell-ID, services are quite limited, especially in rural areas, and street-level navigation is not possible. With A-GPS street-level navigation might work - map-based, detailed navigation on Smartphones: the next big revenue driver for Telcos?

Has anybody here used A-GPS in the US, Korea or Japan? What's it like?

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