Vodacom`s location based service (LBS) Look4me has acquired around 40 000 subscribers since launching two months ago. While Vodacom may be happy with this figure, it only amounts to an insignificant 0.4% of their 10.2 million subscribers.
The number of Look4me subscribers is especially insignificant considering how much money Vodacom has spent on advertising the product. Campaigns have been run in almost every form of media, except online advertising (excluding Vodacom`s website).
Considering the revenues being generated from the product, it must be running at a loss. There is a subscription fee of R10 a month, which amounts to R400 000 a month generated by subscription fees. Granted, there are the location costs of R1.69 per SMS request, R2.99 for a map received via MMS and USSD charges of surfing charges of 20 cents every 20 seconds.
Put all these figures into a hat and be as generous as you like about how much money the product is generating, it still amounts to nothing compared to the cost of those colourful adverts in the newspapers giving step-by-step instructions on how to use the product.
Defeated before it begins?
Analysts of mobile technology will remind us that it took some time for SMS to really take off and that GPRS, Bluetooth and mobile phone Instant Messaging are still battling to find their feet in the market.
However, while the above-mentioned technologies have merit and plenty of potential, I suspect products like Look4me are already doomed. There is just not enough practical application in the product, the number of people using it bear testimony to this.
LBS will be legislated in most parts of the cellular world and that legislation is going to demand accuracy - something Look4me just does not have.
Stephen Whitford, journalist, ITWeb
Look4me only gives an approximate location of the person being located. Unless the locater receives an MMS map, an SMS telling them the located person is 400m from 3rd Ave Berario (a small suburb near Cresta shopping centre north of Johannesburg) is meaningless - unless you happen to know where Berario is!
While a product like Look4me is not that accurate, GPS products are and GPS devices are becoming more affordable. GPS functionality has now been extended to cellphones - for example, the Nokia 5140 - which means there is the functionality for more accurate cellular LBS.
Internationally, there has been much disillusionment with LBS. Figures from the States suggest that more than half of users using LBS like Vodacom`s Look4me are unhappy with the service.
And with more than 50% of emergency calls in the US originating from mobile phones, the US government has legislated that by the end of 2005, all mobile phones will have to be able to give the user`s location through GPS chips in the handsets or by using triangulation from cellphone towers in order for emergency services to locate them.
While the European Commission`s Information Directorate has not as yet demanded that mobile networks provide a minimum level of location accuracy, it is reviewing this decision.
LBS will be popular
Look4me`s failure is not because people don`t want to be located or employers don`t want to know where their employees are. SIM cards are already in many fleet-owned cars, sending millions of SMSs giving exact locations to employers.
LBS will be popular. In the near future it will be legislated in most parts of the cellular world and that legislation is going to demand accuracy - something Look4me just does not have.
Research company Global Information expects LBS to generate $7.6 billion in Western Europe alone by 2009. However, the key to this will be accuracy and the ability to push specific content to specific people based on their exact location. Vodacom and the other networks` money would be better spent acquiring or developing products that use GPS or triangulation, instead of causing disillusionment among users with a product that has little real value.
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LBS: Fad or here to stay?
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