Location enabled mobile phones are still in their infancy in both Europe and the US - although there’s already a significant, if small, market for handheld specialist GPS devices, made by companies such as Garmin and Trimble. Indeed, while the PDA sector is in decline as I wrote yesterday, the one area that is showing growth is GPS enabled PDA’s.
According to Trimble, the 10 -12 million Americans are using their handheld GPS devices for:
- 19% hiking, backpacking
- 12% hunting
- 14% boating/fishing
- 12% off road ATV
- 11% Geocaching
As a long range forecast, as GPS becomes integrated into phones, I can see Geocaching being used pretty successfully in a marketing context - a kind of "treasure hunt" theme.
While this survey is interesting though, I’m not sure it tells us how people will use GPS, once it’s packaged in their phones. It’s one thing to buy a device to support a hobby (like fishing) and it’s another when you suddenly find that your mobile does this groovy thing new thing that you didn’t know about.
But it is another powerful example of the real world meeting the digital one and meeting at the mobile phone.
I use a Garmin Forerunner to measure the distance I run every morning. Neat little device for my hobby.
The same functionality in a cell phone might get used if runners feel it necessary to carry a phone while running. Possibly for women to combine an added sense of security with the practicality of knowing how far you’ve gone?