Update: Thanks to all of you who came to our digital car & mobile reception. Here are the photos:
I'll be at Telematics Update's Navigation & Location 2008 conference in San Jose on December 2nd. Venrock is hosting a digital car/LBS reception that evening at a nearby location. I will also be speaking at the investor panel at 9:55am. The panel is being moderated by Peter Friedland of Seasons Capital and the panelists also include Shawn Carolan, Jeff Crowe, Jodi Sherman Jahic and David Rolf.
With a focus on businesses in the LBS space, the panel will address the following questions:
- Can turn-by-turn navigation vendors support a shift from subscription to advertising?
- Can emerging social mapping players gain traction or is this just a natural extension for entrenched players like Facebook and MySpace?
- Does the iPhone App Store and gradual opening of carrier location APIs move LBS application ecosystem away from carriers?
- Google and Nokia – friendly acquirers or formidable competitors that can subsidise "free" business models?
- Are emerging LBS players more likely to become smaller tuck-in acquisition targets, or will some achieve enough scale for initial public offerings?
The last year has seen quite a dramatic shift in the LBS space, with location data becoming much more easier to access. The iPhone and Android G1 launches have seen impressive location-based platforms become available on a widespread basis in the US. Google, Nokia, Apple, Garmin and Microsoft seem to be emerging as the leading consumer brands in this space. I'm interested in how this open LBS eco-system seeps into the feature-phone mass-market - iPhone and Android-based phones will, in my opinion, not gain majority market share and so how will operators address this LBS envy from everybody else?
I look forward to seeing you at the conference and reception.
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