Edition 1 Christian Lindholm Location and the services built on top of maps will become one of the hottest topics in 2009. Nokia and Google will charge forward, Microsoft and Yahoo! will chase them and others will react. Start-ups will continue to proliferate and be acquired. The opportunity to innovate on top of location is enormous in many areas ranging from social networking, to enhanced communication, to rich advertising services. Tremendous new value will be created. All of this is fueled by GPS enabled devices at significantly lower cost as well as new generations of hardware and software making positioning faster, less power hungry, and more accurate including the ability to have continuous positioning even when indoors. Traditional publishers will start to feel the pressure. Location becomes the new service bedrock Location will be the bedrock of compelling consumer mobile services with enormous monetisation potential. The current methods of overlaying information on maps do not scale and will run into problems. There is a need for innovation in how to contextually search for and find things. One challenge for the mobile industry is to crack the concept that will bring local businesses and consumers together in a common experience where businesses can prosper and consumers get rapid access to information. Mapping data requires similar investment to an operating system and needs to extract local knowledge from people to enrich the experience. Only locals know where the best coffee is served. TomTom and their core asset Tele Atlas is an expensive but likely acquisition target.
