GPS World

Author: Janice Partyka

  • Eight Inches or Less: On the Road to High Accuracy for Automated Driving

    Eight Inches or Less: On the Road to High Accuracy for Automated Driving

    Janice Partyka
    Janice Partyka

    From CES to the Detroit Auto Show, it has been a big month for in-car connectivity that enables vehicle diagnostics, streaming entertainment, telematics and navigation. Ford, GM, Google and Audi unveiled new connected vehicle platforms and features, and AT&T stole the carrier limelight with LTE Connected Services.

    Plus, two industry giants announced that they are working to enable vehicles to continuously record road position at accuracies of eight inches or less. Shoppers are becoming more open to sharing their personal location with retailers. And the U.S. GAO issued a report on location privacy related to vehicle technology and applications. It has been a busy month.

    The first mass-marketed connected vehicle system was Ford Sync, which now boasts one million users and seems poised to grow rapidly with the release of an updated version. The Mustang will be the first of the company’s models with the new Ford Sync, which lets drivers use voice to activate iPhone and Android apps. New voice activated apps include Parkmobile, a parking space finder, and the Domino app, which lets me command my car to order a pizza, just the way I like it. GM announced its first LTE-enabled vehicles for about 10 of its models. Fast connectivity in vehicles will transform in-car experiences and hopefully not kill us.

    Carrier Ringmaster. AT&T wrangled itself into the center ring of car connectivity announcements. The carrier has won a multi-year exclusive agreement to enable Telsa with high speed connectivity. Despite Audi’s collaborative relationship with T-Mobile, AT&T was able to steal some work away from T-Mobile by getting a deal to supply connectivity for some Audi models. AT&T has also teamed up with Ericsson, Amdocs, Jasper Wireless and others to create AT&T Drive, a mobile platform for developing LTE connected vehicle services.

    Pathway to a Jetson Car. Two industry biggies, Continental and Here, are working together to create an end-to-end connected high-precision mapping and vehicle system offering for OEMs. The system will serve as the basis of highly automated driving functionality with the first objective of continuously determining road position to within three to eight inches. That’s quite a task. The maps will include road information that will feed vehicles with information to allow them to react to changing road conditions or speed limit changes, automatically. Continental was the first automotive supplier to be granted a test license for automated driving on public roads in Nevada.

    See Me Now. The percentage of consumers willing to share their current location via GPS with retailers nearly doubled year-over-year to 36 percent, according to a new IBM study of more than 300,000 global consumers. The study distinguished four distinct groups of consumers, differentiated by their interest in and use of social, location and mobile technologies while shopping. The largest group, 40 percent of shoppers, use social, location and mobile technologies, but don’t utilize them for buying products. The second largest group, almost 30 percent of shoppers, will use these technologies for making purchases. The rest of the shoppers sit on either pole of being tech laggards or hyper technology users.

    In-Car Privacy under the Microscope.  The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has looked into privacy issues for in-car location-based services. The GAO examined how 10 companies are using location data and if they share it, and how the policies and practices of these companies align with industry recommended privacy practices. Each of the companies stated that they do not share personally identifiable location data with marketing companies or data brokers. The GAO found that not all of the companies were following industry recommended privacy policies. The report was prepared for the Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law of the Judiciary Committee. The companies that the GAO chose to examine included TeleNav (ScoutGPS Navigation), Google Maps (Navigation), TomTom (LIVE Services), Garmin Traffic, Ford Sync, Chrysler UConnect, Honda AcuraLink, GM OnStar, Toyota (Lexus Enform and Toyota Entune), and Nissan Infiniti Connection and CARWINGS.

    Retailers are Getting Closer. Qualcomm has made its Gimbal proximity beacons commercially available, which are reportedly accurate to one foot and work indoors and outdoors. Gimbal is a proximity platform for brands to engage customers’ mobile devices with contextual communication, using a combination of physical location, activity, time and personal interests. The intent is to increase the relevance of content delivered to end users’ devices to allow retailers, content providers and developers to send personalized high-value content to mobile devices.

  • Public Geolocation Vault on the Horizon?

    Imagine a vault of highly accurate geolocation data that provides look-up service for any device, in any country, based on publicly sent signal data. It is an appealing idea. Mozilla, best known for its popular Firefox browser, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to openness on the web. No one is better positioned to create the very first public geolocation database. Mozilla wants to build the data service with the end goals of enabling innovation and improving location data privacy. The group makes the point that improving the privacy of user data is counter incentivizing for-profit companies that collect this data. Privacy continues to be a major industry issue that has gotten more than one company in trouble with regulators and customers.

    Mozilla is starting out with a pilot project, named “Mozilla Location Service,” to assess how it would build and operate a location service to provide geolocation look-up for devices. The data will be based on publicly observed cell tower, Wi-Fi or IP address information. Mozilla is enlisting its loyal community to collect the data via a special app for Android-based phones.

    Admitting Wrongness. Those of us who skewered Apple for its map troubles continue to eat crow. The Apple maps have improved and are popular, or at least good enough, with most iPhone and iPad users in the U.S. As you may recall, Google maps were expelled from the iPhone when Google refused to give Apple access to its turn-by-turn navigation. Google, who had delighted in Apple’s map debacle, has now been badly humbled. The company has lost almost 23 million mobile users in the U.S. as a result of its banishment. iOS users can still assess Google Maps, but data from market research firm ComScore suggests that few actually take the trouble to download Google Maps. When iOS 6 began to roll out and introduced Apple’s maps as the default, the number using Google Maps dropped precipitously, even as the number of iPhones and Android phones began rising.

    Big Money from Mapping. The value of being a map provider cannot be underestimated. Both Apple and Google cull anonymous data for traffic reporting and improving their network. More importantly, they have created a gold mine by using the data to glean for behavioral information about users. The data is fed to advertisers who create contextual ads that are more likely to get us to buy. Google also uses the data to improve search results.

    Good news for the Enterprise Industry. A survey of 500 fleet operators conducted by C.J. Driscoll and Associates shows high satisfaction and strong intent to purchase GPS fleet management systems. From an enterprise customer’s standpoint, GPS-enabled solutions are measured by how quickly the company can recoup its outlay. An impressive two thirds of the fleets surveyed reported that they have recouped their investment in their GPS fleet solutions. Of the fleets that haven’t deployed a GPS fleet management system, 16 percent indicated that they expect to do so within the next 18 months. The fleet survey is contained in the C.J. Driscoll 2013-14 Survey of Fleet Operator Interest in MRM Systems and Services report.

    The Final Frontier: Indoor Location. Applications are increasingly hungry for ubiquitous, well-performing location for all devices. Sensor fusion, or the intelligent combination of data from multiple sensors, will become a standard feature to help make this happen in indoor locales. “Sensor fusion will surpass Wi-Fi and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) as the most important handset-based indoor location technology by 2017,” predicts Patrick Connolly of ABI Research. “We see a significant trend towards hybridization, with Wi-Fi, BLE, and sensor fusion proving to be vital.” Companies in this market include Movea, HillCrest, indoo.rs, and Senionlab.

    Wind Blowing in New Direction. PlaceIQ, the location context company, has ventured into location-based behavior analytics. The start-up company had been focused on providing information on the context of location in small geographic areas, 100 by 100 square meter units. One of the company’s new offerings, PIQ Analytics, “can identify which competitors a brand’s audience is most likely to visit, the restaurants where they typically dine, the type of device they use, and the stores that they frequent,” reports the PlaceIQ website. The company’s other new product tracks individuals and “determines where consumers were before arriving at a brand’s physical location.” PlaceIQ is going to have to careful how it treads this ground, if it wants to avoid raising opposition from privacy watchdog groups.

    Mapping Sadness  As you may have heard, a father has discovered that Google Maps shows the body of his son, who was shot to death in 2009 beside a railroad track in Richmond, California. In a written statement, Google announced that it would accelerate the replacement of the satellite image of the map, the first time that it made such a change due to a request. Google indicated would take about eight days to make the change, as the image has continued to be visible on their maps. Perhaps a reader can explain to me why replacing this map segment would take so long, or why the image could not have been obscured by Google until the replacement is made?

    I will be moderating a session at the IEEE International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo on December 5 in Las Vegas. The SAE-organized panel is on Connected Infotainment. The panelist are industry experts who will share perspectives in this interactive session.

  • New Ways to Track Mobile Users

    New Ways to Track Mobile Users

    Companies like Drawbridge indentify a user's devices across platforms.
    Companies like Drawbridge indentify a user’s devices across platforms.

    In the location business, we used to talk about tracking — namely, vehicle tracking.  We stopped using the term as it sounded too close to Big Brotherism. Vehicle and employee tracking is much more prevalent today, but we have delicately renamed it “mobile resource management.”

    Tracking is back in the news, and it is rightfully being called what it is, tracking. You may have seen the New York Times article about new ways people are being tracked via their mobile phones and other devices.

    Tracking mobile phone behavior hasn’t been prevalent, because mobile apps don’t use cookies, the small files that can watch our behavior on our desktops and laptops. This has changed. Now Internet advertising companies like Drawbridge are using powerful algorithms to analyze anonymous browsing patterns on devices and look at the dates and times, location and websites visited, and user activities on sites. The companies can determine that a mobile phone, home computer, work computer and tablet belong to the same person.  The devices do not need to be connected for the match to be made. In a household full of people and devices, these companies can even distinguish among users.

    This isn’t in its infancy. One company alone says it has matched 1.5 billion devices this way. The incentive of the industry is to arm advertisers with behavior knowledge to enable hyper-personalized ads on the device that makes the most sense. The ad may be delivered on one device based on a person’s activity on another device. For instance, Greg is looking at a website for basketball shoes at his computer at work. He goes home and gets an ad for those shoes on his tablet, and it maybe a hyper-local ad for a store where he often shops. The ad may come at a time that he is primed to shop, on the device he will likely be using then. Mobile advertisers that are  exploiting this data include Drawbridge, Flurry, Velti and SessionM. Companies that are advertising based on this mobile tracking data include Ford Motor, American Express, Fidelity, Expedia, Quiznos and Groupon.

    As we know, phone data is not the sole interest of commercial companies. It is of interest to the government as well. This month, the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted that it was tracking the location of the U.S. population. Between 2010 and 2011, the NSA used cell towers to locate Americans. The NSA claims that it obtained the data, but didn’t use it.

    What’s next? There is something left that mobile advertisers still haven’t figured out. They have no sure way to know the results of an ad placed on a mobile phone. Has the person viewed the ad and gone to the website on their computer, or walked into a store and placed an order?  It probably won’t be a mystery for long.

  • Watershed Moment Approaching for the Connected Vehicle

     

    A watershed moment may be approaching for the connected vehicle market. The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) is about to start on the path towards mandating connected vehicle technology. Interest in the market is not limited to a few countries; last week I moderated a GPS World webinar on the connected vehicle that drew registrants from 40 countries.  Other news in the industry includes Sprint removing Sprint Navigation and TeleNav GPS Navigator from bundled data and data add-on plans. A new report shows it has become more expensive to acquire app users. And despite no longer being preinstalled on iOS devices, Google Maps is doing pretty well with Apple iOS users.

    During our GPS World connected vehicle webinar, held September 19, I noticed differences in how the audience characterized the connected vehicle. The connected vehicle enables information to be exchanged with other vehicles, devices and/or road infrastructure to provide safety, mobility and consumer functionality. The devices that are used with the connected vehicle can be nomadic (phone, tablet, personal navigation devices), vehicle embedded and aftermarket devices. Communication options are currently cellular, Wi-Fi or DSRC/WAVE.

    Regulation Pushing Connected Vehicle Forward. In a recent statement, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) asserts that connected vehicle technology “can transform the nation’s surface transportation safety, mobility and environmental performance.” NHTSA is expected to start rulemaking on the connected vehicle later this year, which could result in a connected car industry mandate in the U.S. While it could take five or more years for final rules and several more years for rules to take effect, it would be a transformative event. “In six years, I expect to see vehicles widely using the technology,” said Scott McCormick of the Connected Vehicle Trade Association. “Vehicle manufacturers are eager for connectivity in vehicles, but need to understand the regulations that will be in play. This hasn’t been idle time, as vehicle makers are ahead of the game and have already embedded some connected vehicle technology into vehicles that can later be activated.”

    The commercial fleet market has been the first adopter of connected vehicle technology as efficiencies provide cost savings, but the automotive market is poised to catch up. “Fleets now have access to actionable intelligence from the field,” said Andrew Maliszewski of Micronet, as well as an industry consultant. “Business decisions are now being made from data, including fuel levels, driver behaviors, vehicle performance, weather and traffic conditions, and even real-time trailer connect/disconnect events.”

    Ownership of Data is Tricky.  Some of the data that is produced inside a vehicle will be of great value to marketers. It will reveal personal information, including your driving habits, where you go, and how you react to in-vehicle marketing. David Jumpa of Airbiquity asserts, “There is uncertainty on who will own the data, but the sensory data, such as how you brake and accelerate, would be owned by the vehicle OEM.” When polled, many listeners of the webinar opined that content and app providers, and not vehicle OEMs or data infrastructure companies, will own personal data generated.

    Making Money, or Not. The technology of the connected vehicle market hasn’t been easy, but it has been much simpler than finding the revenue models that will support companies in this market. “In the past, the vehicle market would use a tier-one manufacturer to deliver the entertainment solution, including maps and routing,” said Scott Sedlik of Inrix. “That isn’t the case now, and multiple suppliers work together and are also having to carry the risk that the vehicle OEMs had solely carried.” Some of the content and app providers are making money; others are figuring out the right business model. One of the questions that remain is whether the OEMs will pay for in-vehicle services and content. This is a pivot point of business, Sedlik adds.

    Mobile App Marketing Cost at High. For brands that proactively market their apps, the cost of acquiring a loyal user increased in July to $1.80 according to Fiksu’s Cost per Loyal User Index. This is a jump of 30 cents from June, falling just a penny short of the December 2011 price of $1.81. Fiksu attributes the cost rise to brands leveraging Facebook’s mobile app ads, which target consumers based on app and games access on smartphones.

    Mobile Map Usage. More than 60 percent of iOS users accessed Apple Maps at least once during the previous 30 days, reports Mobidia. That isn’t too surprising given that it comes installed on the phone. However, 20 percent of iOS users accessed Google Maps during the same period — impressive, since the user has to go to the effort of installing the software. Google Maps usage is heavy, although not as heavy as Apple Maps use.  55 percent of iOS users that use Google Maps, use it weekly; 80 percent of Apple Maps users use it weekly. Not bad, Google.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Millennial Media Launches Suite of Mobile Measurement Products

    Millennial Media Launches Suite of Mobile Measurement Products

    millenialmediaMillennial Media has announced the launch of Omni Measurement Solutions, a suite of measurement products designed to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of mobile campaigns. The new solutions will combine Millennial Media’s extensive first-party data with best-in-class third-party data sources to show the impact on key advertiser metrics driven by a campaign.

    “Measurement is one of the most important issues in mobile advertising today,” said Mollie Spilman of Millennial Media. “Brands need to feel confident that the dollars they are spending in mobile advertising are truly moving the needle, and our Omni Measurement Solutions represent the most comprehensive, data rich solution at this scale in mobile advertising.”

    Omni Measurement Solutions currently consists of the following products:

    • Door Open Rate – Measures the impact on foot traffic to a given retail location generated by a mobile campaign.
    • Register Ring Rate –Measures the impact in total credit card spend at a retail location due to a mobile campaign, including number of transactions per purchaser and total basket size.
    • Brand Lift Rate – Measures the impact on high funnel activities such as awareness, intent, consideration, and recall.

    For every measurement product in the Omni Measurement Solutions suite, Millennial Media partners with a third party, and matches mobile IDs against exposed and control groups to judge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns with target audiences. Data analytics company Neustar and location analytics firm Placed are among the launch partners. Millennial Media will offer end-of-campaign reports that will accurately show the impact on advertiser KPIs, and give advertisers credible and qualified insights to use for future marketing efforts.

    To power Door Open Rate, Millennial Media selected Placed. “The product we’re working on with Millennial Media allows advertisers to track conversions beyond the mobile device itself, and extend measurement into the physical world,” said David Shim of Placed. “By combining Placed Attribution with Millennial Media’s industry leading scale, we’re able to measure the impact on in-store visits in a way that was simply not possible before.”

    Additional products will be added to the suite in the coming weeks, including a product in collaboration with comScore that measures online consumer behavior after mobile ad exposure.

  • Placecast Unveils PlaceAd Mobile Advertising Platform

    Placecast Unveils PlaceAd Mobile Advertising Platform

    placecast_logoPlacecast has launched PlaceAd to enable media buyers to target and reach mobile audiences based on their location. In addition to location, advertisers can target and optimize messaging across criteria including age, gender, interests, device type and operating system, time of day, and weather.

    PlaceAd is a demand-side platform (DSP) built to maximize the value of location-based inventory on mobile. PlaceAd’s programmatic buying tools, analytics and included dynamic rich media engine are optimized for location-based campaigns. Placecast’s decision engine automatically optimizes campaign performance.  PlaceAd can manage geotargeted campaigns based on the quality of the location data across billions of impressions with integrated reporting and store-level analytics.

    Placecast is also announcing partnerships with some of the largest ad exchanges and supply side platforms (SSPs), including MoPub, PubMatic, and Smaato. With these key partnerships in place, Placecast can provide substantial reach for brands across thousands of mobile publishers and billions of monthly impressions.

    “Mobile advertising, location and real-time bidding are the key ways to reach consumers today, and ad agencies can’t get enough of them,” says Karsten Weide of IDC. “PlaceAd is hitting a sweet-spot in the advertiser market and provides a timely solution for the pain points in reaching mobile audiences locally.”

    Besides access to many different sources of ad inventory, media buyers also get comprehensive location-based reporting down to the most granular level, including heatmaps that provide a visual illustration of the intensity of impressions and engagement by targeted locations.

    Key features of PlaceAd include:

    • Reach across thousands of safe mobile publishers for location-based mobile display inventory: Via partnerships with MoPub, PubMatic, and Smaato
    • Transparency on publishers where campaigns run
    • Real-time bidding: The ability to price and deliver on a per-impression basis in real-time; IAB OpenRTB 2.1 spec compliant
    • Machine Learning and Optimization: Placecast’s decision engine optimizes campaign performance based on activity across placements and publishers to maximize performance.
    • Dynamic Creative: Clients can change elements in the ad based on location, time of day, or other info on the consumer
    • Store-level analytics and reporting: Consolidated campaign reporting shows deliveries, clicks, and other actions across different inventory down to the individual store location. Heatmaps can be used to see campaign activity near targeted areas.
    • Geotargeting using both proximity geofencing and metro-level data.
    • Audience targeting though a number of methods:
      • Contextual targeting based on content
      • Place profiles
      • Third-party audience data
    • Third-Party Ad Serving Support: Agencies can track their campaign data in DoubleClick for Advertisers or Atlas

    “PlaceAd is the latest addition in our toolset that makes it easier for advertisers and agencies to buy location-based mobile campaigns,” said Alistair Goodman of Placecast. “This new offering combines years of geofence marketing expertise with great tools and analytics that together reduce the friction in buying location-based mobile advertising campaigns at scale.”

  • Google Disappoints with Mobile Ad Revenue, Apple Shines

    Janice Partyka
    Janice Partyka

    It has been a busy month. Apple is getting help turning around its embarrassing mapping debacle with an acquisition of HopStop and Locationary. Latitude, which enables location sharing and check-ins, is being sunsetted by Google, as it adds that functionality to Google Plus. Twitter acquired Spindle to enable real-time location recommendations. Nokia, leading the charge in augmented reality, added LiveSight sight recognition into apps. And mobile advertising, the life blood of many location apps, is exceeding expectations for social media, but is disappointing with mobile search.

    In a week when Facebook’ mobile advertising revenue far exceeded analyst expectations and garnered 41 percent of the company’s revenue, Google’s advertising woes are particularly interesting. Second-quarter revenue results from Google indicate that mobile devices are depressing its online advertising prices at a rate greater than expected. Search-ad prices have been declining since late 2011, but Google’s numbers are still surprising low. The average cost-per-click rate, the price Google gets paid by advertisers, is down 6 percent from a year ago. This was double the drop expected by analysts. The decline is due in part from the lower cost-per-click on sites that are accessed from mobile devices than those seen from PCs.

    Earlier this year, I wrote about Google’s move to accelerate advertisers’ shift to mobile. The company overhauled its AdWords platform in February in an attempt to reach consumers across all device screens. This required advertisers to pay for mobile ads, even if they only wish to reach consumers via the desktop. Google saw this as a way to more revenue and insisted that an integrated platform would also benefit advertisers. The results have been disappointing and the switch to a mobile world may not be entirely good for Google.

    Whatever it Takes. Apple is hard at work overhauling its mapping. Apple has confirmed its acquisition of Locationary and HopStop. Locationary solves the problem of out-of-date points of interest and business data with a platform that collects and verifies crowd-sourced and other data. It also checks the actual physical location of businesses and other places. HopStop offers a door-to-door navigation app that includes transit, walking, biking, and taxi directions in more than 500 cities worldwide.

    Tweeting Spindle. Twitter has acquired Spindle, whose mobile search application leverages the social graph to deliver real-time local recommendations. The app harvests social media activity, including location and time of day, and identifies nearby restaurants, retail and other places in the vicinity. In March, Spindle added push notifications based on user preferences. Twitter has closed down the Spindle offering and is certain to repurpose it.

    Airport Trip Timing. Traffic is only one of the delays that can be encountered on a trip. Not knowing the expected wait time at airport security frustrates travelers. TripAdvisor has acquired GateGuru to provide security-time estimates, gate locations, and real-time flight status. The company collects information from a mix of user-generated content and data from airports. The offering also includes weather forecasts, detailed maps, and information on terminal amenities.

    Augmented Reality at Nokia. Augmented reality (AR) is a leap forward for mapping and is beginning to leave the realm of emerging technology and entering mainstream. Adding AR to maps creates an innate experience in which one can “see” a place with text or a superimposed image. Nokia, a leader in augmented reality, has added LiveSight, an integrated sight recognition technology into the Here suite of apps for some Window phones. Users can enter LiveSight mode, which will scan the surrounding area and pull up relevant information about nearby locations, like addresses, phone numbers, and ratings.Virtual signs are attached to buildings as viewed through the camera display. This can all be accessed off-line.

    Augmented Job Searching. One novel app is Nokia’s JobLens, which adds augmented reality to job hunting. Users can visually see jobs around them through the phone’s camera lens. A number of search filters help narrow down jobs, including filtering jobs that have a connection with one’s social networks. JobLens is integrated with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live. Data is provided by partners that include LinkedIn, Indeed, Salary.com and Zillow. When a user finds a job that she wants to apply for, the application will then walk her through the application process and keep track of her progress. Will the job pay in fictitious currency?

  • The Race to Own Mapping

    Mapping turned up the heat in June, becoming a hot topic across the board. Apple ended negotiations to buy Waze, a provider of crowd sourced mapping and traffic, reportedly because the company did not want to relocate from Israel. Google quickly took Apple’s place as Waze’s buyer. With almost 50 million drivers using Waze, many via Apple Maps, Google would get another leg up in the race to own mapping. The connected car industry, gathered in Detroit last week, discussed the need for intelligibility in the market, particularly more organized categories of offerings.  Also of interest this month is the backpack-mounted Google Trekker used to map the world where cars don’t go, as well as the LocationTech working group.

    Surprisingly, reaction to Google’s sweeping design of new personalized maps, now in limited release, has been muted.  The maps show landmarks, restaurants, and other details tailored to the user’s plans, habits, and interests that will become increasingly individualized with usage. One person’s map may include bars and public pools, another’s may include book stores and playgrounds. Google also introduced other map features like blending of Google’s place images, 360 degree views within retail shops, and 3-D satellite images of earth without a plug-in or download needed.

    Connected Car Gathering. At Telematics Detroit last week, the connected car industry tried to reach much-needed clarity on the state of the connected car, with attention to standardization, consolidation, increased collaboration, and partnership. Many are trying to build a smartphone experience in the car but, “compared to a mobile phone, you’re always going to lose,” said Robert Acker of Harman. “The car is another device on the ‘Internet of Things,’ and we need to optimize that thing for consuming content while driving. Don’t make it a bigger smartphone device. That’s all Google or Apple can do. Rather, completely change the paradigm. Make it totally seamless; introduce gesture, head-up displays, steering controls. Make it truly revolutionized for the customer.”

    Auto OEMs Are Changing Really. Smartphone-like capability in the vehicle is revitalizing the staid OEM industry and has encouraged car manufacturers to take more risk and speed up development time. It used to be de rigueur that a car maker would first pick a supplier like Denso to build a component, like a radio. “Now the automotive companies are first choosing a platform and layering on companies to build the solution. Tech companies are specialists,” says David Jumpa of Airbiquity. “We stand in the middle of the platform that makes it all work together.”  Jumpa expects connected car services to get bundled and consumers to pay a subscription fee.

    Freedom to Choose. To the unhappiness of wireless carriers, the automotive industry is planning on building cars with embedded subscriber identity module (SIM). Unlike current SIM cards that are carrier-specific, these are universal SIM cards that would enable customers to pick their vehicle’s wireless carrier and then change it at will. For OEMs, embedding SIM cards creates great efficiency. SIM cards can’t be easily replaced, as they must be soldered into vehicles because of vibration and shock. With OEMs shipping vehicles to multiple countries that have different carriers, a universal SIM card provides great flexibility and cost savings. Apple once tried to pursue an embedded SIM card and the carriers rose against it, but let’s see how the OEMs fare.

    Mapping the World on Your Back. You’ve probably seen cars loaded with GPS and cameras for mapping streets. It is less likely you’ve seen mapping trikes, carts, or new photo-mapping backpack. Google uses the Trekker, a 42-pound backpack equipped with GPS and 15 cameras. Every 2.5 seconds it takes a picture as a person lugs it along trails, narrow streets, alleys, and mountains. Photos are stitched together to create panoramic images for StreetView.

    Location Collaboration. A new initiative, LocationTech, has arrived on the location scene and is dedicated to individual and company collaboration on open-source software with an emphasis on location. The non-profit Eclipse Foundation, has created the working group LocationTech, led by Oracle, IBM, OpenGeo, and Actuate. LocationTech will allow companies to jointly develop and deploy components that bring location awareness to enterprise IT. “No single vendor can address the range of issues our LocationTech working group members are going to solve,” said Mike Milinkovich of Eclipse. “By creating a multi-vendor, open platform for location technologies, we intend to spur even broader adoption of location aware products, devices and services.” LocationTech might sound similar to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo); however, LocationTech offers full-service support and staffing for open-source location-aware technologies.

     

     

     

  • CTIA: Automakers Developing Their Own Infotainment Apps

    OnStar_logo-TBy Janice Partyka

    It’s a trifecta. The most interesting news at CES, Mobile World Congress, and now CTIA was the connected vehicle. Last week at CTIA, the biggest mobile conference in the U.S., GM and OnStar demonstrated ideas of what we can expect in vehicles once AT&T’s LTE network makes its way into vehicles. We heard about many of their concepts in February at Mobile World, but with the infotainment possibilities being shown at CTIA, it is clear the endeavor is evolving quickly. Providers of navigation, mapping, traffic, middleware, search, points of interest and mobile advertising have key roles. We’ll check in ahead with some of these companies.

    GM and OnStar envision an in-vehicle curated app ecosystem with downloadable apps and remote vehicle management. Developers will have access to APIs that can access the vehicle’s speed, performance, GPS, fuel economy and other information, but are kept out of areas that could cause safety issues. GM, as well as other OEMs, is not ready to let the app marketplace take money out of its pocket. The automaker is pushing to get apps built specially for its vehicles. Mary Chan of GM said that the business model hasn’t been decided, but the apps may be free, bundled into a service that GM charges for, or paid out to the developers. Another possibility is an app subscription paid for on a smartphone could be applied to a separate app in the car. We have to wait until model year 2015 to see it come off the assembly line.

    Snippets heard at CTIA:

    “The biggest challenge of indoor location is having a good enough return on investment by the venue.” Derek Peterson, Boingo

    “We hear many pitches from companies that want to supply us with indoor location technology, but so many of them are just unscalable.” David Hildebrandt, ATT

    “Relevant, connected car data trumps free.” Mary Chan, General Motors

    “The future killer mobile apps are banking, retail, medical (records, diagnosis) and government (voting, administrative).” Michael Saylor, MircoStrategy

    “The ownership of data in connected cars will be a huge issue. And what happens to data in a vehicle when you transfer ownership?” Mary Chan, General Motors

    Traffic Information Is Getting Better. Traffic information is getting more granular, hence more useful. INRIX and others are collecting traffic data in road segments about 250 meters long, a significant improvement from the past. Not too long ago, traffic data was provided solely by sensors, cameras and helicopters, which covered only highways and some arterial roads. The use of crowd-sourced traffic data now provides a leap in the amount of traffic data collected, enabling more current traffic conditions, as well more roads, to be monitored. “We can collect traffic data for these small road segments from all sources, crunch it and turn it around in under a minute,” says Bill Schwebel of INRIX.

    How Fast? In a few years, Schwebel says we will see an expansion of navigation that goes beyond driving from point A to point B. This would include accurate estimates of the entire length of your trip, for instance, driving from your home to arriving at your airport gate. “We will be getting more feeds from parking lots with electronic counters, but we can also see the dwell time in a parking lot, or cars that exit without parking, all from crowdsourcing,” adds Schwebel. Waits at TSA lines or rental car counters can be devised using historical and near real-time data. When schedules of events in the area and school calendars are added, the predictions get better.

    Navigation Changes Ahead. Turn-by-turn navigation will take a step forward to becoming more interactive when it becomes a two-way broadcast. Niall Berkery of Telenav, predicts that two-way connected navigation will appear in 2014-2016. “We are now focused on reducing the complexity of navigation and making it more personalized,” says Berkery. The entire industry, hindered by the perspective that navigation is free, is focusing on adding value. Telenav acquired ThinkNear to add hyperlocal marketing to its offering.

    Embedded Navigation and the Delivery Man. Berkery estimates that 30% of navigation systems are embedded in the vehicle, which can makes updating or servicing the devices challenging. Some years ago an interesting solution was developed in China. When an embedded navigation system needed servicing, it was handled by a package delivery service, similar to FedEx. The delivery person manually removed the navigation hard drive from a consumer’s vehicle and sent it off to be fixed or replaced. When the drive came back from the factory, the package delivery person reinstalled it. That’s pretty special service.

    If you missed last week’s CTIA show, held May 21-23 in Las Vegas, you will have to wait a year and a half for its next appearance. With CES and the Mobile World Congress positioned on the calendar prior to CTIA, the other shows drew the lion’s share of product announcements and crowds. CTIA will reposition itself in front of these competing shows. CTIA’s new “Super Mobility Week” will be more international and take the place of the current fall and spring CTIA shows. Super Mobility Week will be held Sept 9-11, 2014 in Las Vegas and will include MobileCON and other major partnerships to create a bigger show experience.

  • TeleCommunication System Next Gen 911 First in Production with Carriers

    TeleCommunication Systems (TCS), a provider of mobile communication technology, announced that its TCS VoLTE9-1-1 service is first into production with Tier-1 wireless carriers, including two of the largest North American operators. The fully customizable solution enables 4G/LTE carriers to provide both 911 call routing and originating coarse/precise location information, including the 10-digit callback number, to public safety access points (PSAPs).

    Initially, wireless carriers deployed 4G/LTE solely for data use. Without VoLTE9-1-1 capabilities, carriers must process emergency calls over 3G networks (circuit-switched fallback), even in areas where LTE is deployed. However, with TCS’ VoLTE9-1-1 service, they can now process 911 calls in an all-LTE environment, enabling them to reclaim or reuse 3G spectrum.

    “As carriers increasingly move toward LTE networks, the ability to handle 911 emergency communications is critical,” said Thomas Ginter of TCS. “By leveraging VoLTE9-1-1, network operators are helping to ensure subscribers receive the responsiveness they need in an emergency situation, while expanding coverage to areas where 3G coverage is lacking.”

    TCS VoLTE9-1-1 features:

    • Call routing to the PSAP: The TCS VoLTE9-1-1 service routes a 4G/LTE-originated 911 call using coarse location via the route determination function component.
    • PSAP telecommunicators can call back if disconnected: The TCS VoLTE9-1-1 service remains fully backwards compatible, supporting necessary functions such as providing PSAPs with full 10-digit subscriber callback numbers.
    • Re-bid by a PSAP for precise location after call routing: The location retrieval function allows a wireless carrier complete flexibility in choosing its underlying high-accuracy location technology and supports updated/precise position requests.
    • Emergency voice call continuity for location service: Location continuity and location delivery to the PSAPs are supported in usage scenarios where the 911 call switches from 4G/LTE to 3G/2G networks.
    • Expansion beyond voice: As wireless networks advance, multimedia objects such as text, audio and video can be transferred to a compatible termination point with LTE IP networks, for example, an NG ESINet and i3 PSAP. Leveraging an all-IP network makes it easier and more cost effective to interconnect services.
    • Small cell support: The TCS VoLTE9-1-1 solution supports small cells, including femtocells, microcells, and picocells, which are now commonly used in dense urban, indoor areas and enterprise networks.

    TCS supports half of all U.S. wireless E911 calls, serving more than 140 million wireless and IP-enabled devices.  The company holds more than 280 patents, 43 of which relate to public safety, and more than 360 pending worldwide.

  • Indoor Trial Results, Next FCC Chief

    The long awaited results from the independent field trial of indoor wireless location technologies are here. The FCC-chartered Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) tested NextNav, Qualcomm and Polaris. NextNav bested the others.

    Speakers from NextNav and Polaris, as well as test adminstrator Technocom, will take part in a GPS World webinar on April 18. Registration is free.

    Also, there is a guessing game in town and stakes are high. Who will President Obama nominate to replace FCC Chief Julius Genachowski? Tom Wheeler, popular in the telecom community, has been a front runner, but the tide may be turning against him with some charging that he is too snug with our industry.

    Developers will be even more enticed to utilize indoor location now that Apple has signaled its market intents with the purchase of indoor-GPS company WifiSLAM. Safety and security mandates around the world are spurring a wave of telematics offerings by automotive OEMs. For more, read on.

    Who Will Be the New FCC Chief? A coalition of public interest groups sent a letter to Obama warning that Wheeler is too close to the industry that he would be regulating. “You can’t have an objective chairman of the FCC that’s got 20 years of his life invested in being the head lobbyist for industry,” Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation said in an interview. In his past life, Wheeler was an industry lobbyist and also served as head of both CTIA and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

    Adding to Wheeler’s woes, 37 Democratic senators have signed a letter supporting FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. Since she already sits on the commission, Rosenworcel would not need Senate confirmation to ascend to the chairmanship. That could be appealing to Obama, who has faced GOP opposition to many of his second-term nominees.

    However, it could also put Obama in a sticky spot, as he would have to jump over the FCC senior Democrat, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the daughter of Rep. James Clyburn, a member of the House Democratic leadership who has strong African-American support. Obama has been criticized for low minority leadership appointments in his second term.

    Genachowski’s term was a disappointment to people on many sides of the fence, but not the all-out disaster of his predecessor, Kevin Martin. Genachowski will be remember for the introduction of the National Broadband Plan, as well as plans for a complete overhaul of the Universal Service Fund. During his time as chairman, Genachowski took the lead on killing AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. The next FCC chair will need to navigate hefty issues including media ownership, Internet rules, universal and affordable broadband, and locking of phones.

    CSRICHow Good Is It Indoors? The FCC chartered CSRIC to test the indoor performance of location systems across urban, suburban and rural areas in the San Francisco Bay Area. TechnoCom, an independent agent, conducted the trial with more than 13,000 test calls placed from different technologies in 75 unique indoor locations. Three vendors submitted technologies for evaluation: Qualcomm, NextNav and Polaris. They were scored for horizontal and vertical accuracy, speed of location, and reliability and consistency of results. NextNav stood out for its performance on height and horizontal accuracy. The full report is available from the FCC.

    To hear from the experts involved, tune in to GPS World’s webinar, “Indoor Positioning & Navigation: Results of the FCC’s CSRIC Bay Area Trials,” on Thursday, April 18. Speakers include Khaled Dessouky (Technocom); Ganesh Pattabiraman (NextNav); Norm Shaw (Polaris Wireless); and Greg Turetzky (CSR). Registration is free.

    Apple Goes Inside. Apple has acquired indoor-GPS company WifiSLAM, a sign that the indoor mobile location market will be heating up. Apple’s involvement is a significant move that will ignite the developer community to rush to create more innovative apps and solutions based on indoor location. WiFiSlam is a two-year-old start-up that detects a phone user’s indoor location by analyzing the strengths and IDs of Wi-Fi signals in its vicinity. WiFiSlam has been offering the technology to developers for indoor mapping and new types of retail and social networking apps. Retail has been the first adopter of indoor technology.

    Interactive Voice Ads Leverage Location. Nuance Communications unveiled Voice Ads, a new mobile ad format that enables consumers to interact directly with ad campaigns by speaking (or perhaps, yelling) into their smartphones. Voice Ads expands on voice and natural language technologies and leverages capabilities like location to deliver ads that prompt the user to ask questions. In a YouTube video, Mike McSherry of Nuance demonstrates a virtual Magic 8-Ball campaign that answers users’ verbal queries to promote a fictional deodorant brand. “Mobile has a monetization challenge,” McSherry told AllThingsD. “By introducing voice you can transcend the small screen size.”

    Telematics Boom. The telematics market is about to ride a wave of growth. Vehicle OEMS are rolling out safety telematics in advance of safety and security mandates throughout the world including Europe (eCall, 2015), Russia (ERA GLONASS, 2013) and Brazil (Contran, 2013). ABI predicts that the OEM and aftermarket safety/security telematics vendors will see the number of users rise from 72 million at year-end to more than 300 million in 2018.

    GPS Ankle Monitors Not Working. In 2012 the state of California started conducting tests on the GPS ankle devices that monitor more than 4,000 high-risk sex offenders and gang members. Officials discovered that the batteries died early and reported locations were off by as much as three miles. Tampering alerts failed and offenders could cover the devices with foil or use GPS jammers to go undetected. Many of California’s ankle monitors were replaced with devices from a different vendor, but test results of the new system were not made public.

  • California’s Ban on Texting while Driving Extends to Navigation

    California Map – Bear Flag

    Steve Spriggs was cited for holding his smartphone in his hand using it for navigation while driving. California code 23123 reads, “A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving.” Spriggs  fought the ticket, saying the law does not apply to looking at maps.

    But a judge of the appellate court said holding a phone to look at a map is distracted driving — the same as sending a text message — and the law applies.  “Our review of the statute’s plain language leads us to conclude that the primary evil sought to be avoided is the distraction the driver faces when using his or her hands to operate the phone. That distraction would be present whether the wireless telephone was being used as a telephone, a GPS navigator, a clock or a device for sending and receiving text messages and emails. This case requires us to determine whether using a wireless phone solely for its map application function while driving violates Vehicle Code section 23123. We hold that it does. “

    The National Safety Council has noted that there is no research or evidence that indicates voice-activated technologies eliminate or even reduce the distraction to the drivers’ mind.