Technologies are meant to make lives easier, and India is embracing new
technologies every day. From booking train or air tickets from the comfort of
your home or making a financial transaction through your wireless device or
sending a bouquet to your loved ones back home while on vacation to a faraway
island, technologies assist you in doing all this and more. Over the time,
demands for such technologies have increased to fulfill more personal needs.
One such technology is the global positioning system or GPS. GPS is the use
of satellites to determine a location in co-ordinates. This can then be combined
with a digital map to offer more services such as route information or the
nearest distance to a point of interest or an m-coupon (called location-based
services). Driving on Indian roads is like finding your way through a maze, as
most of our roads don't have names or signs to guide you. But technologies like
GPS can help the situation. The technology, powered by digital maps of various
cities, will be built in your car or your wireless devices and prompt you to
your destination. Digital mapping companies like Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ,
globally, and MapmyIndia in India are propelling this business, creating a
demand among potential users. Digital mapping companies feed their data into
various applications like in-car navigation systems, personal navigation devices
(PND), and mobile phones and PDAs.
The Market
Though digital mapping in India is still nascent, companies like Tele Atlas
and NAVTEQ and MapmyIndia are upbeat. “The market for in-car navigation systems
globally has seen an exponential growth in the last three years,” says Rakesh
Verma, MD, CE Infosystems, and promoter of MapmyIndia. Last year saw a sale of
20 mn PNDs in the US and 30 mn in Europe. Though the in-car navigation system
has so far been associated with luxury cars like Mercedes and BMWs and is
prominent in developed nations, PNDs and other wireless devices like mobile
phones and PDAs have recently started entering developing economies like India.
India is a classic example of mobile growth adding around 8 mn customers every
month. “Though a large chunk have low-end phones which do not support GPS and
hence are not useful for location-based services, tapping the high-end phone
users would not be a losing proposition,” says Arnout Desmet, MD, Asia Pacific
South, Tele Atlas. Industry experts say the total market, including applications
and service of this industry, is expected to reach $12 bn by 2012.
New Applications
In the Indian context, it seems that the digital map information would be
more suitable for mobile phone users. “In other words, GPS could find its best
use in mobile devices, rather than in-car navigation system as globally the
price of a unit in-car navigation system is around Rs 2 lakh, a price at which a
car can be bought!” says Desmet. Though some telecom service providers have now
started offering LBS to customers, mobile application developers such as CanvasM
are waiting for the mapping industry to mature. This will mean the ignition of a
new industry-location-based services. “Location-based services have moved far
ahead in other countries. In India, there is less geographic information system.
Hence, global positioning system use is also limited,” says Jagdish Mitra, head,
CanvasM. “But the potential is immense,” he adds.
Just by making a simple calculation, we can find out how much petrol, diesel
and natural gas gets wasted in forgetting the way to our destination. There are
more than 10 mn vehicles in metros like Delhi and Mumbai and if each vehicle
goes just 5 km out of its way every month, alarmingly, we are wasting any where
between Rs 15-25 crore every month and here we are talking about just metros.
Inclusion of 'A' category cities would give us a mind-boggling figure.
With increasing implementation of GPS and GIS (geographic information system)
in Indian cities, we can now ensure fuel, time and mental efforts don't get
wasted in forgetting our way. In India, many high-end carmakers have started
implementing this technology and this was substantiated by a recent statement by
General Motors, which is using MapmyIndia navigators. These navigators could be
built into vehicles and can also be purchased over the counter.
There are a lot more applications than just finding your way based on
GPS/GIS. It can help the transport department anticipate and manage traffic flow
in a better way, ambulances and other emergency services to reach the scene
faster, make late night travel safer for citizens. It has a huge potential in
rural areas too. It can form the basis for mass developmental activities in
agriculture, transportation, and efficient use of rural resources. But for all
this to become a reality, digital mapping companies have to gather more and more
geographic information of India's varied geography. Moreover, they have to
update the data on a regular basis.
The US government plans to make all mobile vendors include GPS as a default
to increase efficiency of emergency services. GPS devices and mapping software
on a mobile phone are popular in countries where the Internet and GPRS access is
ubiquitous.
There is a fast-growing demand for location-based services (LBS) among
consumers, companies, and developers of navigation solutions across the globe.
LBS solutions deliver information-based on the location of a person using a
particular digital map device or application such as a mobile phone, smartphone,
PDA, in-car navigation system, a laptop, or a home computer. With location-based
services, consumers benefit from information that is more relevant and timely,
and experiences that are safer, more reliable and enjoyable than ever before. It
all depends on how quickly India can become an Internet-driven economy.
Commercialization of maps, inclusion of points of interest, and location-based
services will boost the mapping industry in India, say industry experts.
Roadblocks
Many of us would like to believe that government regulations have been one
of the roadblocks in LBS adoption in India. However, contrary to popular
perception, it is not the government regulation that is hindering adoption;
instead, it is the cost of the device. India is a cost-driven market and
currently the high cost of GPS devices, or a high-end cell phone that supports
LBS, is not able to justify returns on investment for many applications. Kumar
believes that low-cost location-based devices would mainly drive applications.
Since 2004, a lot of positive changes have been made by the government to
expedite adoption of LBS. In 2004, GPS was removed from the classified list of
defense equipment, allowing free import of GPS without the need for a license
from the Information and Broadcasting ministry or clearance from the Defense
ministry. The MapIndia policy was released in 2005 to de-criminalize possession
of a digital map by a person. However, the directive is still unclear and all
maps created need to be certified by the Survey of India.
The recent move by the customs department to tax GPS-enabled phones at the
same rate as a regular phone has resulted in the sale of GPS-enabled phones.
“However, non-cellular location platforms like personal navigation devices (PNDs)
or portable media players (PMPs) are still characterized as radio navigation
devices and attract very high duty. Reduction of duty at consumer levels will
truly provide great impetus to the adoption of LBS in India. Indian telecom
operators are focused on acquiring voice subscribers and increasing the number
of subscribers. They would have to see that location enabling these voice
subscribers will allow them to migrate some of their customer base to a voice
and data plan, and hence increase their ARPU. Vertical services like security
phones will allow operators to tap into two segments that are not fully within
their reach-children and senior citizen; a huge segment that is being ignored by
operators.
However, an ecosystem of vendors is being created in order to bring in LBS;
right from companies that are creators of location to device vendors and
application developers, the list of companies is growing. Feeding content to
these devices and applications are mapping companies. Therefore, there is a huge
ecosystem working toward making location as ubiquitous as time. India has a huge
potential, with the LBS market expected to cross $500 mn in the next 3-4 years.
A population of more than a billion and teledensity of 11% is indicative of a
huge market. The key to making LBS a successful service lies in identifying
high-value services and tailoring these services to address the Indian market
requirements.
Gyana Ranjan Swain
gyanas@cybermedia.co.in
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