Social Location
The N97 was only announced a couple of days ago and is Nokia's new flagship smartphone. As well as combining a touch-screen and a QWERTY keyboard, it also has a GPS antenna, to allow "social location". This appears to be an initial dipping of toe in the water of location based services (LBS), which many are expecting to become a major feature of future mobile phones.
David Wither, the CEO of UK GPS antenna maker Sarantel, gave us his thoughts on the launch of the N97. "We welcome the N97, because it's just more proof that the popularity of GPS in the handset continues to gather steam," he said.
"We predict that GPS in the handset will mirror the evolution of the camera in the handset in that as consumer adoption grows, expectations for performance will grow in parallel until the quality is roughly equal to that of ‘pure-play' devices.
"Nokia's concept of Social Location, is sure to stimulate demand for ‘extreme' positional accuracy because, for example, users will need to know exactly where they are in proximity to certain landmarks - from cashpoint machines to their Facebook friends. This means their phones will need to be able to establish which side of Oxford Street they are standing on, rather than just the fact that they are on Oxford Street.
"The update of GPS-enabled smartphones like the N97 will also stimulate demand for a better usability model. People will not realistically be able to walk safely down a busy street whilst trying to read instructions on a small handset display; they will want to put the handset in their pocket and listen to turn-by-turn instructions through their headsets."
Nokia appears to be counting on LBS to be a key differentiator in its favour in the future smartphone market, so it will be worth keeping an eye on the N97 and its successors to see if the gamble is paying off.
