The gold standard for telematics success is daily relevance. One of the greatest challenges for companies introducing telematics systems and solutions is to bring daily relevance to their offerings. Human beings are creatures of habit, which means that driving directions are normally not required daily, gas pricing and parking...

Last week SBD analyst Stephen Longden gave us his views on eCall, following the recent EU Parliament ruling on passing an ITS Directive. This week Kevin Hamlin, from iSuppli gave us his thoughts - slightly different from Longden - on this complicated matter.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. The EC’s long and slow march towards pan-European eCall took another important step forward recently. But as always, hurdles and uncertainties remain, making it hard for the automotive industry to distinguish fact from fiction. The ITS Directive ~ Progress but just as...

The mobile industry is hugely competitive. Mobile services today include a spread of services that go far beyond basic voice services, such as messaging, video, the mobile web and mobile TV to name a few. One of the most competitive markets within the mobile industry is the mobile location-enabled services market....

Last week Apple launched the latest version of the iPhone operating system, iOS4. As promised, for the first time the iPhone operating system now supports background processes for third party applications. Apple has treaded lightly in this area, allowing other major smartphone providers (including Android, RIM, Symbian, etc.)...

In a note published on ABI Research’s website, telematics and navigation analyst Dominique Bonte expresses concerns about the future of TomTom that, while having “turned the car navigation system into a mass market consumer service in 2004, […]ultimately risks relegation to the role of niche player.” In his analysis...

Coming back from the rather buzzy Location Business Summit Europe 2010 (i.e. MetaPlaces) a few things were clear to me: operators haven't yet written down their location strategies, LBA is a reality the agencies are now very interested in, and everybody thinks it's a great idea to build their own location database. The...

The business of capturing and reporting real-time traffic data is on the verge of a deluge of data from millions of GPS probes. From Google to RIM to TCS, TeleNav, Nokia/Navteq and others, the integration of handset GPS data feeds will transform the industry and alter consumer acceptance of traffic data. The importance...

Badges, Passports, the Creator, the Founder, the Mayor, getting a Pin, picking up a raccoon..This is the language of the newest phenomenon to hit the location-enabled social media marketing world. I am talking about Social Networking Games. No longer only for geeks and geocachers, these are real tools for seeing where...

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona GPS Business News met with Kanwar Chadha, Chief Marketing Officer at CSR and SiRF founder . At the trade show CSR was showcasing the fruit of the alliance between SiRF and CSR (merged last year): a Android-based platform merging location, connectivity, audio and multimedia features....

INTERVIEW: Automakers are intent on offering new solutions for connected or digital cars. Dev Khare, vice president at venture capital firm Venrock, explains to GPS Business News what is driving the convergence between cars and mobile phones. He also discusses some of the innovations resulting from increasingly connected vehicles, including in-car app stores and narrow cast and mass-customisation radio.

In this article, John Craig, Director of product management at Intermap Technologies gives a deep analysis of the use of maps in the car and argues that in the future two different types of maps will emerge: one to guide the driver and the other for the car itself, for a safety and energy consumption purpose.