New Pew Report - 28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services.

According to the report published by Pwe Research Center on the 6th of September 2011 28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services. That number includes all kinds of using location information on the mobile phone including getting directions or recommendations based on location of the user. That result is not surprising knowing that according to the Nielsen in the study made in July 2011 74.6% of Android users have opened the Google Maps app on their smartphone during last month.  What needs to be commented is that in 2011 only 4% of all adults use geosocial services like Foursquare or Gowalla. This means that the number hasn't change from a similar study made by Pew in 2010. Growth of those services might be driven mostly by non-american users. Geo-social services are growing extremely fast especially in Asia.

What is interesting are demographic changes. In August/September 2010 6% of men used geosocial services, while only 3% on women shared their location with others. In 2011 the gender difference is only 1%. Does it mean that women started to be less afraid of publishing their location? It seems so. In my opinion the difference comes from the fact that in August 2010 Facebook has launched it's 'Places' which increased popularity and trust to such a services among women during one year period.

Currently due to several scandals the location tracking technology in mobile devices in under constant intense scrutiny but the fact is that the market of is growing and analysts are pretty optimistic about it as well in Europe. From the report it seems that the investors should concentrate on Location Based (Aware) Services that are providing information more than on Location Based Social Networks. We'll see soon where the market will go.

source: Pew Internet

The location-based analytics market in US is set to overcome privacy concerns and grow to reach $9bn in value by 2016

According to ABI Research - technology market research company - the location-based analytics market in US will reach the $9bn in value by 2016. Currently due to several scandals the location tracking technology in mobile devices in under constant intense scrutiny but ABI but reckons this will not get in the way of the market blossoming in the future.

According to senior analyst Patrick Connolly this temporary debate will not prevent the future success of location-based services, marketing and advertising, all of which will be based on location analytics – the aggregation and analysis of location information to identify trends that will enable new services and more effective advertising.

The firm said that the “real power” of location-based services will come from a combination of analytics and advertising, when consumers can be anonymously targeted through social, geographic, physical and emotional indicators. While the location analytics market is relatively new, it has been evolving for a number of years and has been the major driver for recent location-related acquisitions by the likes of Apple, Google, Nokia, Facebook and Microsoft. Eventually, location will become commoditised and will be treated as just another piece of demographic information. Consequently, location analytics will become the core provider of value in location-based advertising.

source: research-live.com