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RAFE
NEEDLEMAN'S WHAT'S NEXT
Beyond Location-Based
Content
Forget coupons and advertising; the next frontier for location-based wireless services is the location-appropriate downloadable app.
By Rate Needleman, January 20, 2003
I have in the past criticized location-based content services, like those that send pop-up coupons to your cell phone - offering discounts to stores in your immediate vicinity. But after talking to two Swedish companies, I see that there could well be a nice market for the development of rich applications - not just content delivery --that are tightly tied to a user's location.
One of the Swedish ventures is experimenting with the solution to a problem familiar to sports fans everywhere: Television spectators often get better information than people sitting in the stadium do. TV viewers, after all, get all kinds of statistics and data about the players --computers even track hockey pucks to make them easier to spot.
The Arena Programme, funded by Ericsson (ERICY), Telia, the University of Lulea, and other Scandinavian enterprises, uses wireless networks to provide in-depth data - and video -- about sports events to fans in the stands. In addition to offering player statistics, the system can transmit telemetry on players (like heart rate or the force of the last check's impact) and also point-of-view video (currently from the referee's helmet only, since players don't want to carry any extra weight).
Arena is also capable of delivering replay video (from several different angles) and running two-way applications such as quick polls. Arena has run demos over wireless LANs to iPaq handhelds, and also over GPRS (the technology that allows mobile telephones to send and receive data) to phones like the Ericsson T68.
It's a nice application, and it goes beyond mere entertainment. Coaches also get a data feed -- in fact, they get more details than fans do. And should a player suffer an injury, information about the accident (impact data) and about the athlete's condition leading up to the accident (heart rate and respiration, for example) can be used to help make a diagnosis.
Another Swedish company, Appear Networks, is working on a related business. It has a product that downloads applications to handhelds when they come within range of a specific wireless network; the system can also uninstall the programs when the handhelds leave the vicinity. Theoretically it could be used to blast Arena's app to handheld devices as sports fans carry them into a stadium. A few European railway systems already use it to get security and other information onto rail employees' handhelds. There's also the potential for significant applications in health care, where confidentiality issues call for products that don't put patient data on a portable device and then leave it there.
I like the idea of walking into a stadium and automatically getting a rich, location-specific application. And I'm sure stadium owners would be happy to have the option to disable these apps as users leave --making the application part of the draw to the stadium.
A consumer market for this system would depend on a widespread rollout of handhelds capable of downloading and running real applications. Currently there's not enough cellular bandwidth or compatibility among mobile phones for this; what's more, there simply aren't enough .WiFi-equipped Pocket PC and Palm (PALM) computers in customers' hands to support the development of consumer-grade location-based applications. For business apps, though, there are already solid uses for this: maintenance guides, patient monitoring, and security, to name a few. And looking toward the future (easy to do in Sweden, where cellular access is available to dogsledders in the middle of remote, frozen forests -trust me on this), it's easy to imagine new business opportunities for the consumer market as well.
-Rafe Needleman
Rafe Needleman is the Silicon Valley insider's insider. For years he's led loyal readers of his Catch of the Day column to the hottest new technologies. Now he's bringing his latest finds to you with What's Next, his new twice-weekly online column for Business 2.0.
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