Preface

2010 was, in many ways, the year of location-based services (LBS). It marked several key milestones from both technological and market points of view. In terms of technology, GPS-enabled handsets finally moved on from being a narrow niche to become a segment in their own right. This was owed to a dramatic reduction in the cost of GPS chipsets and to the drive by mobile industry market leaders, notably Nokia, to place location at the heart of their strategy for growth. In terms of market positioning, 2010 saw the biggest explosion of LBS ever, with both start-ups and established web players staking their claim in this competitive marketplace. Today, we’re seeing a move away from location-based services as a separate area of mobile, to location being embedded across a large section of mobile applications. Location-aware applications are becoming the norm within the mobile world, particularly where smartphones are concerned.

A true turning point was the launch of the first-ever TV advertising campaign for an LBS by Loopt in the United States, which took place in mid-2008, when it sponsored the Middle Show on Black20.com. The enormous marketing success of the iPhone and iPad has made using location-based applications both simple and stimulating for a key niche of today’s mobile ecosystem. Already, over 20% of iPhone apps incorporate location in some form, and this percentage is growing. The development of Android is set to become a further catalyst spurring the rapid deployment and adoption of increasingly embedded location-based services.

In this book, we address what we believe will be the core questions for developers of location-aware applications, but which we consider are applicable for the wider mobile ecosystem in general:

• How do you choose the right mobile platform for your application?
• How do you make money from your application?
• How do you get your application to rise above the noise in the industry?
• How do you deal with privacy issues?

We hope to provide answers to these questions—and more—in our book, and to welcome you to the era of “location everywhere.”