Investigation of Proposed Applications for LBS Enabled Mobile Handsets

Location-based services (LBS) have been of keen interest to the m-business community for a number of years. However, applications deployed on a large scale have been slow in emerging - most existing systems are research prototypes or specialised niche applications, whose development has concentrated on exploring technical possibilities rather than commercial success. In this paper we report the results of a study to identify candidate killer-apps for LBS. The method used was to produce outline descriptions of 9 applications in 7 different consumer application areas, and survey users to obtain feedback on their level of interest in 7 of these. The most popular idea amongst surveyed users was Wired-Call Rates, where calls from a mobile phone would be charged at the same rates as wireline calls, when located in specified areas (for example at home). Other applications of interest were mainly those where LBS provides an addition to an existing service.