Understanding the Trends in LBS scenario
The growth of the location based services (LBS) market is driven by the emergence of connected navigation devices, the development of new device form factors with advanced user interfaces (iPhone), the expected pervasiveness of GPS-enabled phones, and the availability of affordable data plans with both converged and dedicated navigation and telematics solutions vying for dominance.

Dominique Bonte, a research principal analyst with ABI says, “While location-industry value chains have long remained fragmented, the ongoing trend towards consolidation is finally moving the location based services industry into a mature stage”.

“The expected growth of the LBS, navigation applications, services market and the necessity of improving profitability through economies of scale are the main drivers behind these vertical integration trends. These forces are demonstrated by the acquisition of digital map providers by PND vendor TomTom and handset manufacturer Nokia, the increasing dominance of a limited number of major brands, and recent efforts by carriers to enter the LBS market in Europe and the US.

Understanding How GIS affects the society
This year ESRI has bestowed “Making A Difference Award” to a couple. This award goes to individuals/ organizations that use GIS innovatively to significantly change an organization, environment or the society.

The couple has pioneered the use of GIS in South America and bettered the lives of people living in Venezuela barrios. They both used GIS to study poverty and analyze where to locate community services such as bus stops, health facilities, sidewalks, infrastructure in squatter developments where 50% Venezuelan population lives.

Their work has improved the living conditions of millions of people.

The couple has also released a book about their methodologies in “Analyzing Urban Poverty: GIS for the developing world“.

Connecting the dots together, The LBS market is now increasingly focused on a limited number of applications such as off-board navigation and social networking, around which features such as location-based search and friend finders are centered.

It looks very apparent that the life of a common man will have more geo-enabled applications and technologies around, further dropping down the geographical boundaries that still exists with us.