Mike Sheldrick

LBS service providers are cheering the new iPhone: it has GPS, a lower price, and Apple's commitment to pave the way for enterprise apps.

Traffic data and the ability to update that data in real time are quickly becoming product and service differentiators in a crowded market. But what happens when the traffic data supplier becomes a competitor?

This is my last issue of LBS Insider. I´ve enjoyed the wild ride, launching what has become the highest-value and highest-circulation LBS newsletter - not to mention driving traffic numbers for the LBS website that tops that category ? and I hope you´ve enjoyed the ride with me. At any...more >>

General Motors Corp. continues to upgrade its OnStar system to compete with the growing plethora of third-party satellite navigation options available for consumers. Following the introduction of a navigation service early last year, the U.S. automaker recently announced that it was collaborating...more >>

If William Blake were alive today, and were he a copywriter for a cellular carrier, he might write about seeing a World in a Widget. Widgets are iconographically powerful metaphors for underlying information (or an applet), and therefore are especially useful for the limitations of display and...more >>

Call it the American Idol of LBS, or Mobile Wireless March Madness, Navteq's LBS Global Challenge each year attracts a clutch of innovative applications seeking fame and fortune. Well okay, maybe just a fortune. In fact, six Global Challenge participants have gone on to receive venture funding and...more >>

J. D. Power and Associates is best known for its consumer satisfaction surveys, but it also does studies on product quality and performance. No doubt it was coincidental that the company was recently commissioned to do two studies, one on traffic, and one on map data. Unfortunately, detailed...more >>

Prices FallingSomewhere between 70 and 150 nav systems, many of them from new entrants, were displayed at the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January.

Last month's column posed the question Whither portable navigation? I found no pat answers then. Now, after many showy splashes at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I still find none - only a deluge of interesting developments.

Navigation is hands-down the top dog in location-based services. Sales of portable nav systems in the United States are predicted to finish 2006 somewhere north of 2.5 million, more than double last year's sales. Betting that the past is prelude to future, many analysts project a similarly rosy...more >>