Location Based Services: Who Will Make the Most Money???

Combine Myspace and TomTom and what do you get? Location based networking services, of course. Sumit Agarwal of Google Mobile asserts that this is the next big thing. He us offers a vision of a family going to Hawaii and later locating on a map the places they've traveled because mobile devices effortlessly and seamlessly collect information. Boost Mobile is already pushing this product, which is called Loopt. You can see more information about it here.

Watch out, because according to Sumit it's addicting.

But what about privacy issues? Some people may not necessarily appreciate being tracked by their own cell phone. Cormac Conroy of Qualcomm hastens to add that although privacy is important, it is not the bottom line.

"People always have to have the ability to keep the information to themselves if they choose […] but in general I think we found with technology people are willing to trade off privacy for convenience."

"At the end of the day, users will benefit from openness of location information."

Bob Iannucci of Nokia agrees, and acknowledges the delicate issue of how much information carriers are liable to release.
"The carriers are struggling with this information; to what degree do they (carriers) open that information and create together with us a platform that people can build interesting applications on?"
But the question remains, will carriers open up? Peter-Frans Pauwels of TomTom is of the opposite opinion.
"I think it's going to be hard to get carriers to open up. That's a challenge."