London-Location is at the very heart of the next generation of mobile services and the future mobile web. Last year, both Nokia and Google made big announcements highlighting location as one of their key strategic axes. Now Vodafone is keen to position itself in this space and its recent acquisition of Swedish navigation software provider Wayfinder is but the first step in that direction.I presented the experience of GeoMe in launching a location-enabled mobile social network at the Informa Mobile Location Services 09 Conference in London on the 12th May, describing how to overcome some of the barriers to adoption, especially privacy, and new distribution channels that can be exploited for getting the product to market.
I was also priviliged to be in good company on a speaker panel on the next generation of location services together with o2, TIM, Qualcomm and content provider Spoonfed. The conclusion? To create demand, you need to offer a good product with a clear value proposition. Will 2010 be 'the' year of location based services? The answer: 'probably'.
You can see my presentation on Slidespace below:
