November 2008
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Dr. Chris Drane, one of the world’s leading location experts, has predicted that after 2009, use of GPS in the Location Based Services (LBS) market will start to drop. This is in counterpoint to most analysts who tout an ever-increasing penetration of GPS.
Widespread use of integrated Wi-Fi/cellular location technology (WiCell location) will drive the change in GPS usage.
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WiCell can provide sufficient accuracy for most LBS applications, and it works well in areas where GPS fails, such as inside homes, shopping malls and high-rise CBDs. In fact, GPS tends to fail in the very places that most mobile use occurs. As well as providing indoor coverage, WiCell eliminates the high battery drain problems that have plagued GPS users.
It is coherent integration of Wi-Fi and cellular location technologies that makes WiCell a viable alternative to GPS. This integration results in greater accuracy than can be achieved from independent operation of the two modes, enabling effective delivery of accurate and responsive LBS in all those places GPS cannot reach.
For many years, we have accepted GPS industry claims about achieving indoor coverage and acceptable battery usage. However, as more and more GPS-enabled handsets are deployed, more of us have first-hand experience of GPS’s inadequacies. People are disabling GPS after just a few days’ use, because they find their mobile batteries go flat within a few hours. People using iPhone’s cellular and WiFi location capabilities realize that for most purposes, GPS is unnecessary.
“Despite extensive claims and several generations of development, the GPS industry has been unable to solve its problems with indoor coverage and battery drain. WiCell location solves these problems, providing wide coverage, low battery drain, and sufficient accuracy for almost all applications. Eventually GPS will only be used in niche applications, such as turn-by-turn navigation.”
Dr Chris Drane has been working on consumer location systems since 1980, pioneering three generations of location systems. He is the author of two books and numerous papers on the subject. He is founder and CEO of Seeker Wireless.
Seeker Wireless has applied a radically new approach to determining the location of mobile devices without requiring a GPS unit in the handset. Seeker’s patented algorithms, 20 years ahead of current
so-called “triangulation” methods, yield significantly higher accuracy and reliability and, importantly, deliver scalability that is simply not possible with other solutions.
SeekerZone™ enables location-based billing for mobile network operators.
SeekerLocate™ permits cross-media players to deliver location-based advertising and other location-sensitive services across multiple mobile networks. SeekerLocate™ is powered by the world’s first hybrid GPS/WiFi/Cellular localisation engine.