What are the implications of “Mobile First” for the geospatial industry?

Many companies are adopting a ‘mobile first’ approach to software application development, given the increasing computing capability of smart phones and the sheer number of application-capable handheld devices. The growth of the mobile market for platforms and applications has been huge, and the demand for solutions and services of a geospatial nature in the mobile space has been steadily rising .

Global phone growth is averaging 20% per year, despite the recession, and has reached more than 4 billion subscriptions worldwide with 82 million in the U.S. The trend also translates to mobile PCs or netbooks where the market has grown 71% over last year to reach a revenue of $36 billion, and that will only accelerate with the growing interest in the iPad.

Many geospatial vendors have increased their investment in mobile platforms and mobile capabilities. For instance, Michael Jones at Google has just recently indicated that the emphasis for development work on Google Earth is now on mobile devices. This sentiment is echoed in other quarters, with greater capabilities for mobile application development that include a software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone from ESRI with their ArcGIS 10 release. What are the implications of this trend for greater handheld features, and less of an emphasis on the desktop?

Mobile Feeds Globalization

The ubiquity of mobile devices is a global story, where far more people will own a smart handheld communication device than will have access to a computer connected to the Internet. This phenomena makes the handheld very attractive for application development that deals with global change, particularly in the developing world where the pace of change is accelerated. We can expect to see a number of mobile innovations that originate outside of the western world to improve global health and quality of life.

As has been witnessed by resent crisis events worldwide, the mobile platform is a critical device for reporting current conditions and for coordinating resources in an efficient and effective manner. The devices are also increasingly of interest for citizen science where individuals become sensors to record information about their changing environment.

Mobile computing platforms are now predominantly location aware, and are gaining increasing sensing capabilities beyond camera and sound recording to include the ability to “sniff” chemical signatures and to sense and record vibrations such as from earthquakes. The fusion of these inputs, along with their location, make mobile devices a leading and active component of the sensor web.

Apps vs. Ads

The possibilities of location in the consumer-oriented mobile world has been of interest for some time. There was first white-hot interest in the term location-based services (LBS) starting in 2001, with a large number of launches and a huge presence at the largest mobile phone conferences. Since that time the popularity of location to serve ads and content to the consumer audience has ebbed and flowed, with seemingly annual declarations that this is the year location will be huge.

The majority of LBS plays are around location as a means to deliver advertising and generate revenue from the huge global search market that was once owned by Yellow Pages. These potential advertising revenue rewards are fueling capabilities that are being harnessed by mainstream geospatial domains where location is used to solve business problems and to increase our understanding of the built and natural world.

The use of phones as application platforms will be really interesting from a geospatial solutions and process perspective. The greatest gains are in the realm of augmented reality, where devices will inform our surroundings with overlaid plans or the means for the device to provide a window beyond what’s visible for understanding a complex environment.

Social But Serious

The serious application space, where apps are designed for business workflows, has been largely walled within domain expertise. The data collectors for such real-world assets as utility locations and conditions has been the domain of only the employees of that organization. These barriers are about to open up widely as organizations realize that customers are vested partners for data collection and feedback, and can contribute greatly to improved operations at little or no capital cost.

Increasingly, citizens are becoming much more active outside of their individual occupations because they’re finding a voice, purpose and reward from their participation. The cognitive surplus is a nice description for this movement to explore and participate in activities we like and care about that go beyond the motivation of money.

The latest wave of location-participation applications such as foursquare and Gowalla are aimed at this urge to discover and share things about our surroundings. As people increasingly “check-in” to their current location and see where others are and what they are doing, we all collectively benefit with greater details and understanding about each place. These social mobile community resources will also have a more serious side where collective intelligence will enable a better managed metropolis.

Geospatial functionality is a critical motivator for the “Mobile First” movement, and geospatial insight stands to be a primary beneficiary of wider mobile adoption. As the constantly-connected and location-aware capabilities go global, a rich pipeline of measurements will need to be validated, catalogued and analyzed by experts.

References

Worldwide Mobile PC Shipments Totaled 49.4million Units in the First Quarter of 2010, Gartner, 5/25/10

Global Mobile Phone Growth Remains Strong Despite Crisis, Radio Free Europe, 10/23/09

Yahoo! Acquires Koprol; Extends Social and Mobile Strategy With Location-Based Community, Press Release, 5/25/10

The Great Cognitive Surplus (Interview of Clay Shirky and Daniel Pink), Wired Magazine, June 2010

Cell Phones are the Biggest Platform Ever Created, video presentation by Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, Keynote at 2010 International CES