Growing Demand for Location-based Services (LBS) in Advanced Mobile
Markets
SINGAPORE, /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ --
- Japan and South Korea lead in adoption of LBS -
Location-based services (LBS) in Asia-Pacific are expected to see strong growth in the
next five years, with wider adoption in the more advanced and saturated mobile and mobile
data markets.
based Services Highlights, finds that the mobile LBS market covering 13 Asia-Pac countries
earned revenues of US$383.6 million in 2007 and expects this to reach US$2.8 billion by
end-2013, at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 39.3 percent (2007-2013).
If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides service providers,
vendors/manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview of the
Asia-Pacific LBS market, then send an e-mail to Sarah Lourdes at sarah.lourdes@frost.com,
with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail
address. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by e-mail.
Japan and South Korea are the leading adopters of LBS -- respectively accounting for 49.5
percent (US$190 million) and 43 percent (US$165 million) of the total Asia-Pac revenues in
2007.
"Concerns regarding privacy infringement, erroneous detection and interoperability issues,
high roaming charges, and the lack of global positioning system (GPS)-enabled handsets
have to a large extent thwarted large-scale deployment of LBS systems in most Asia-Pac
countries other than Japan and South Korea," says Frost & Sullivan senior industry analyst
M. Kumaresan.
LBS in the rest of Asia-Pac have largely remained a niche offering until recently with the
more mature mobile markets of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan
experimenting with such differentiated value-added services in an attempt by operators to
sustain revenues. "In these countries, however, the demand for LBS will be driven mainly by
enterprise users for applications like fleet tracking and asset management, unlike Japan and
South Korea where the appetite for consumer LBS applications is high," Kumaresan says.
"Apart from the sophistication of LBS technologies and available services, the popularity of
LBS solutions is also determined by lifestyle and consumer behavioural patterns, which have
a huge impact on market dynamics. Subscribers in these two markets are accustomed to
using such services for location-based proximity and entertainment-centric applications," he
elaborates, adding that community creation, child-locator services, crime-preventive LBS and
other such innovative applications are expected to be more prevalent in Japan and South
Korea moving forward.
Kumaresan believes that the increased bandwidth and ubiquitous network coverage
across the region is expected to fuel the growth of LBS. "The deployment of high-speed
packet access (HSPA) and impending WiMAX networks, and the already advanced mobile
broadband technologies are expected to serve as catalysts in the adoption of LBS," he says.
In the near term, however, he says that operators in the developing markets with low
mobile penetration are likely to focus on adding new subscribers and driving data traffic with
basic mobile data services.
Although he explains, "Given the huge popularity of peer-to-peer and personalized SMS,
personalized push-based content by location information will be a key driver towards mass
adoption of LBS-type applications.
"Integrating LBS applications with mobile advertising is also a potentially attractive revenue
model that operators would be looking to adopt," Kumaresan adds.
He notes, however, that the LBS value chain is currently fragmented with numerous
participants. The typical LBS ecosystem comprises geographic information service (GIS) or
map providers, application developers, content providers and aggregators, merchants and
advertisers, platform and infrastructure vendors, handset manufacturers, and mobile
operators.
Learning from the Japanese and Korean experience, a conducive ecosystem is one with
mash-up offerings. Kumaresan believes that over time the value chain will evolve region-
wide, with integrated service and content providers. "Japan and South Korea are expected to
lead in developing a comprehensive business case and commercial model that can
eventually be replicated across the region," he concludes.
The Asia Pacific Location-based Services Highlights study is part of the Mobile and
Wireless Growth Partnership Service program, which also includes research in the following
markets: WiMAX, emerging mobile markets, mobile advertising, mobile broadband and
mobile content. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market
opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews
with market participants. Analyst interviews are available to the press.
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Contact:
Sarah Lourdes
Corporate Communications - Asia Pacific
P: +603.6207.1030
E: sarah.lourdes@frost.com
SOURCE: Frost & Sullivan
CONTACT: Sarah Lourdes,
Corporate Communications - Asia Pacific of Frost & Sullivan,
+603-6207-1030,
sarah.lourdes@frost.com
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