Let's assume iPhone will get GPS1 capabilities. After all, the hardware part itself reportedly costs only around $4, and the market for location-based services (LBS) is apparently growing like mad and is supposed to be something like $10B within the next couple of years. (But then again, aren't they always?) Add to that the fact that Apple has included the CoreLocation framework in the iPhone SDK and I think it's safe to assume location is a relevant area of focus for iPhone.
But will iPod Touch will get GPS too? I tend to think so.
While making new features exclusive to the iPhone would help differentiate the products, it's not clear to me that that's what Apple wants to do. CFO Peter Oppenheimer is on record as describing iPod Touch as "the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform running all kinds of mobile applications".
I suspect that Apple doesn't see iPod Touch as an iPhone minus the phone, but rather sees iPhone as iPod Touch plus a phone. That may sounds like a subtle distinction, but it's not.
With the more-accurate positioning data that GPS would provide, Apple could do to the LBS market the same thing they've done to the mobile web, which is to say, turn it upside down.
1 Here I'm using the term "GPS" broadly, to include not only the US GPS system but also similar systems like Galileo in Europe and GLONASS in Russia (where iPhones are reportedly status symbols), but not so broadly as to include iPhone's current cell-tower-plus-hotspot-triangulation technologies.
Wow, Nice call! You really nailed that one.
Posted by: Fred Johnson | July 26, 2008 at 11:14 AM