High Demand Foreseen for Mobile LBS in China

China's mobile Location-Based Services (LBS) market is still in an early stage, but a recent survey shows there is a high demand for these services, reports In-Stat. To date, a scarcity of low-priced GPS handsets and easy-to-use applications, rather than high service price, have constrained usage, the high-tech market research firm says.

"We believe that with falling GPS phone prices and more attractive and easy-to-use applications (i.e. LBS client) in place, mobile LBS will be accepted on a large scale," says Frances Guan, In-Stat analyst. "In the future, we believe that services that combine LBS and other mobile value-added services will be very competitive."

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• Existing mobile LBS users are mainly business subscribers with higher-than-average income.
• Local information and navigation applications are the most popular mobile LBS concepts.
• Survey respondents who are in the 35-39 and 18-29 age groups, including students and technical engineers with high and middle range income, showed strong interest in mobile LBS.

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Posted to the site on 11th July 2007