Location Based Service growth

One from the audience of my most recent session at the BT Tower posted a comment in this blog asking about my views on the future of LBS, RFID and DVB.  I am assuming that LBS meant location based services and so I will use this posting to address this one. 

This graph from Skyhook Wireless shows the growth of just iPhone location applications.  A similar pattern will I suspect apply to the Android platform too in due course.  The future for location based services is very bright, especially in the context of handheld devices.  At the moment, a minority of people regularly use such applications, but those that do understand the benefits and power which they bring.    In just a few years, I expect many more people to be using these types of apps, and soon a majority - which will change how we communicate, since many of the "i'm on the train" type calls and messages will be redundant.  

My colleague and fellow futurologist, Robin Mannings, has published a book on Ubiquitous Positioning, which covers both LBS and one of the other acronyms (RFID) that 'Pete' asked for my views on in his blog comment.  I will cover RFID on other occasions.  Pete may find that book of interest too.