A new report from Juniper Research says the continuing surge in mobile internet usage, combined with the increasing number of smartphones and featurephones with built-in integrated GPS receivers, will see location-based local search and information services used by nearly 1.5 billion mobile users by 2014.
The report also said browser-based services would dominate the local search market but downloadable apps will increasingly eat into that share, particularly through city guides and entertainment guides. Total revenue from all mobile location-based services is expected to reach $12.7 billion by 2014.
Dr Windsor Holden, the report's author, said "The sharing culture of Web 2.0 is increasingly shaping the way many location based services and location enabled apps develop. Social networking application usage has continued to grow at an explosive rate, while mobile driven apps such as Loopt and Brightkite have extended the Web 2.0 concept further with the introduction of geotagged content."