Global location-based platform and infrastructure revenues to reach $1.8 billion by 2015

LONDON, UK: Global LBS platforms revenue will grow from $560 million in 2010 to $1.8 billion in 2015, at which point they will reach saturation.

While in the past Mobile Location Center (MLC) licensing revenues were largely driven by the E911 emergency calling market in the United States, in the future both the launch of carrier-grade LBS services and governmental safety and security requirements will boost MLC revenues in other regions such as Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte comments: “While the recent off-deck revolution has boosted the popularity of consumer LBS applications on smartphone application stores such as Apple’s iTunes, there is still a large opportunity for carriers to invest in network-based positioning platforms for the provisioning of mission-critical person-tracking as well as enterprise LBS services.” These include asset tracking and workforce management.

At the same time governments across the globe are taking the lead in investing in network-based positioning for lawful intercept, emergency calling and national security purposes, due to its superior indoor coverage and overall reliability compared with GPS, as it does not rely on handset functionality.

Bonte continues: “While high precision A-GPS location technologies are expected to dominate the social consumer LBS space, medium-accuracy methods such as enhanced Cell-ID and high accuracy positioning such as U-TDOA will provide carriers with unique assets allowing them to challenge off-deck LBS providers.”

The MLC vendor ecosystem consists of traditional wireless infrastructure providers such as Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, and specialized players such as Telecommunication Systems (TCS), TruePosition, and Creativity Software. TCS has been particularly successful in the US with a large number of deployments with smaller carriers which has earned it a second place in terms of deployments market share, after market leader Ericsson.