(Great posting as always Russell)

I think this is a classic case of California coming on board very late to the big party of mobile telecoms (having been blinded by the much smaller IT / PC / Internet industry). America is 4 years behind mainstream Europe, six years behind the leading markets like Scandinavia, South Korea and Japan. EVERYTHING we hear from America about mobile today, is old news in these markets.

So again, LBS. So now the Californians have discovered this dead horse, and feel somehow they can resurrect it? I am not saying there are “no” apps in LBS, only that it was so heavily overhyped years ago, that most every conceivable concept has already been trialled. Those LBS experts should take a VERY close look at the world’s most advanced LBS market – Japan – and its most experienced LBS operator, KDDI the second largest operator of Japan, which launched the world’s first LBS apps.

KDDI regularly talks about its LBS portfolio, and even in Tokyo – a city so confusing the street numbers are not in sequential order – where KDDI has been providing LBS based mapping and positioning services for over five years now – still today there is NO killer app in LBS.

There are dozens of games, dozens of family trackers and friends-finders and hunting dog trackers and allergy warnings and personal weather reports and even the pay-as-you-drive LBS insurance service etc launched around the world. My collection of over 1000 mobile app “Pearls” has literally dozens upon dozens of commercially launched LBS apps. But they don’t make significant amounts of money.

What Americans really, REALLY should do, is as they are so much behind, don’t go repeating everybody’s mistakes. Go study the advanced markets and try to catch up. LBS is a dead horse, don’t waste your money on it.

Oh, and anybody reading this – my second book from 2001, m-Profits – is the bible of how to build billable value to mobile apps. It has 170 service concepts outlined and has the industry’s service-creation tool, the Five M’s. Its available at Amazon and all major bookstores. I suggest you start with that book, and then read Russell Buckley’s excellent messaging book or Paul Goldings advanced mobile apps book, etc and go where the money and customers are. Don’t bother jumping into this pool of quicksand they call LBS…

Tomi Ahonen
4-time bestselling author on mobile
http://www.tomiahonen.com
blogsite http://www.communities-dominate.blogs.com

With that in mind, I’m trying to gather developers in this area together to form a ‘collective’ a company owned by the sum of its parts to conjure wonders in this area. I love the work (Paul) of the Mobile Radicals and have a crazy idea I want to develop but need to workshop it with people already experienced in this area.

Hmm, I wonder how much investment money is being spent on LBS this year…

In all seriousness though, I would really like to have better integration with the carriers location info. Here’s my suggestion, for which I will gladly be the first customer to sign up:

1) Each carrier co-markets with two or three *relevant* LBS services to kick things off. This lets new customers see these cool new apps in action when they purchase the phone
2) The upsell during the sale, is to get the customer to sign up for “Location Awareness” (some marketing person can surely pick a jazzier/better term)
3) Location awareness costs a flat $2 a month
4) There is an on/off switch for Location Awareness (actually some of my older phones already had this – though I didn’t know what it really affected)
5a) When Location Awareness is on, web browsing requests will have an additional header with location information (simple geocoding, cell id, actual city/address, whatever – the services can use whatever they are given)
5b) When Location Awareness is on, new pictures, videos, audio, will be geotagged and that geotagging information will be preserved when they are transmitted (especially through email)
5c) When Location Awareness is on, messages will have geo/location information baked into their headers or other fields that will survive the journey to their endpoint (SMS,MMS,SMTP)
6) Sit back and watch the mobile web explode with LBS innovation

I suggested this to a T-Mobile guy a few days back and he favored the angle of a carrier partnership with a lead company. The problem with that approach is that is blocks *everyone* else out, including the people with the truly innovative ideas.

Please, some carrier, any carrier take the dive and release location as an easy to understand add on. I will gladly pay my $2.