Mobile local search is a technology that lets people search for local things using mobile equipment such as mobile phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices. Mobile local search satisfies the need to offer a mobile subscriber spontaneous access to near-position services and information such as businesses, products, events, restaurant, movie theatre or other local information.[1] Mobile local search is the search and discovery of persons, places, and things within an identifiable space defined by distinct parameters. These parameters are evolving. Today they include social networks, individuals, cities, neighborhoods, landmarks, and actions that are relevant to the searcher's past, current, and future location. These parameters provide structure to vertically deep and horizontally broad data categories that can stand-alone or are combined to comprise searchable directories.[1]
Mobile local search is usually based on organized directories accessed through specialized search tools, rather than the web, although mobile local search often provides links to mobile (WAP) web sites. It is also an application of a location-based service.
Technology
Mobile local search involves in some cases GPS tracking, which, without prior consent, may cause privacy concerns. Furthermore, recent surveys expect merely 10% of mobile devices worldwide to be equipped with GPS chips in 2011.
Alternatively, mobile local search can also be done without mobile operators and GPS systems involved. This is possible through access to the SS7 protocol, which mobile operators have. However, having access via the mobile operator is very hard since the mobile operators sell it at a premium rate, if at all.
Although GPS-enabled devices are not prevalent yet, industry experts show that consumers are demanding mobile local search now, with an expected growth of 91% from 2007 to 2011. As a consequence, there is a gap in this opportunity that can be cleverly addressed by mobile operators and service providers with access to the SS7 layer.
Access methods
Mobile local search may be screen-based using the keypad and display on the mobile device, or voice-based using spoken commands that are interpreted by a speech recognition application.
Screen-based search using the keypad to enter search terms into a form on the mobile screen is the most common access method today. It has the advantages of working in a noisy environment and avoiding speech interpretation problems. But the user has to enter search terms using a small keypad typical of most mobile devices, with results displayed on a small screen. Screen-based search may be awkward for people with coordination or vision handicaps.
Screen-based search may be supported by a specialized application such as where.com running on the handset, by an SMS short code, or by a WAP or XHTML-MP website page on a remote server displayed by the handset browser. Although most search tools today are based on handset software, the trend seems to be towards web-based services.
Also, when the consumer receives a reply to his search request, the most common way of delivery is via SMS.
Voice-based search is becoming viable due to advances in speech recognition technology. It is useful for people who have difficulty using the small keypad, or who need to get information while driving. Spoken prompts guide the users through the local directory to find an entry. The service may include fallback to a live operator if the speech technology has difficulty understanding what they are looking for, or a 'silent agent' may assist the speech recognition software.
Results may be spoken and/or delivered to the handset in SMS or MMS format, where they may be stored for future reference.
Most often, voice-based search uses the voice channel to deliver the caller's utterance to a server-based search application. In some cases, a small application on the mobile device undertakes the first part of speech recognition, breaking down the utterance into a series of elementary components or 'phones', and then sending the phones over the data channel to a server application.
Multimedia-based search will be prevalent as a hybrid form of both "voice-based" and "screen-based" search that will establish a time-memory tradeoff in the implementation process of fast-evolving mobile equipment.
Types of information
Mobile search content may include more location-based and more street-smart information on businesses, products, services, events, human relations and other local specifics, which require immediacy and spontaneity. Besides, the location-based content may be formulated by accumulative data mining on consumer behaviors and whereabouts, which may trigger privacy concerns, commercial come-ons and, if necessary, some legislative justifications.
A search for businesses is the mobile equivalent of the printed Yellow Pages, but the search may focus on a small geographical area. For example, the caller may be looking for a nearby pharmacy or restaurant, or may want a local pizza delivery. The more advanced local search tools will vary the search radius depending on the type of business and the density of this type of business in the local area. For example, a caller looking for a coffee shop will probably want one within walking distance. If they are looking for a home furniture store they will expect to travel further. If they want a taxi, distance is not important: the taxi will come to them.
A search for products is more specific than a search for businesses. The user is looking for a particular product and wants to find a local business that stocks this product.
A full-function mobile local search service will go much further, particularly as smartphone penetration increases. For example, mobile users may want to find where a particular movie is playing, what restaurants are near the cinema, read reviews about those restaurants, and book reservations or buy movie tickets. They may want to hear about traffic conditions, the score from the local football game, the winning lottery number or where to go to vote.
Differences from Web search
As opposed to Web search, mobile local search requires more immediacy and street-smart knowledge and information, local events and driving directions. The technical difference from web-based search is that, whether using the keypad or voice commands, the caller has limited 'bandwidth'. They do not want to hear or scroll through long lists of results. They want to "quickly and unobtrusively" zero in on the type of local information they are looking for, due to privacy, safety and time pressure.
Some of the advancements by the major portals in Internet search, such as Google's famous page-ranking scheme, do not apply in the wireless world since people are not searching for Web sites as much as answers to specific questions. 2006 showed a significant movement to the question-answer model. In this model answers are sent in reply to directory service queries similar to the nature of conventional 411 operators. AskMeNow, Ask.com and Bing.com all made efforts in this regard.
Business models
Mobile local search services are usually provided today by mobile carriers, directory enquiry providers, mobile messaging operators or Yellow Pages publishers. Behind these outlets, there is a growing network of agencies, distributors and software providers, some of whom are now starting to offer service direct to the public. Search giants, like Yahoo and Google, and big web publishers, such as Amazon.con and eBay have already embarked on this potentially lucrative market segment.
The services are provided through a caller-pays, advertiser-pays or hybrid business model.
In a caller-pays model, as with voice-based directory enquiry services, the caller pays each time they access the service. Caller-pays voice-based local mobile search services are common outside North America, but have been slow to emerge in the USA due to regulatory restrictions.
In an advertiser-pays model, standard for screen-based search and starting to emerge with voice-based 'Free DA' services in North America, businesses pay to be placed early in the list of results, or pay each time a caller chooses to connect through.
In hybrid models, advertising revenue lets the service provider offer reduced rates.
As with TV, magazines and other media, mobile local search services will most likely continue to be offered under all three models, but the hybrid model may predominate. That is, callers will probably accept a limited amount of advertising (which they may actually find useful) in exchange for reduced prices, but may be less willing to use a free service where they are bombarded with advertising.
The value to an advertiser will vary depending on their type of business, and may range from a dollar or less for a taxi or sandwich shop to well over ten dollars for a real-estate broker, attorney or debt consolidation service. Consultants forecast that the global industry will grow to over US$1 billion by 2010.
The most direct way to find more about what is happening in the MoLo space is to check out the websites of the MoLo service providers and see what they are offering. There are many of them. Almost all mobile carriers have mobile local search offerings, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, Orange SA and so on.
Many Directory Assistance providers also offer mobile local search, including free DA providers Jingle Networks and 1-800-San-Diego in the US, 118 118, Yell Group, Pages Jaunes, Seat Pagine Gialle, Eniro etc. in Europe, and many others. One of the more fully functional services is provided by Contact Center Americas in Colombia.
The Yellow Pages Group in Canada provides one of the first voice-enabled local search services.
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text messages. An intermediary service can facilitate a text-to-voice conversion to be sent to landlines.
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. The term is derived from Greek: τῆλε and φωνή, together meaning distant voice. A common short form of the term is phone, which came into use early in the telephone's history.
In telecommunications, a customer-premises equipment or customer-provided equipment (CPE) is any terminal and associated equipment located at a subscriber's premises and connected with a carrier's telecommunication circuit at the demarcation point ("demarc"). The demarc is a point established in a building or complex to separate customer equipment from the equipment located in either the distribution infrastructure or central office of the communications service provider.
Location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, entertainment, work, personal life, etc. Commonly used examples of location-based services include navigation software, social networking services, location-based advertising, and tracking systems. LBS can also include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. LBS also includes personalized weather services and even location-based games.
Enhanced 911 is a system used in North America to automatically provide the caller's location to 911 dispatchers. 911 is the universal emergency telephone number in the region. In the European Union, a similar system exists known as E112 and known as eCall when called by a vehicle.
Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telephony, IVR allows customers to interact with a company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which services can be inquired about through the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed. IVR systems deployed in the network are sized to handle large call volumes and also used for outbound calling as IVR systems are more intelligent than many predictive dialer systems.
A telephone call or telephone conversation, also known as a phone call or voice call, is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. Telephone calls started in the late 19th century. As technology has improved, a majority of telephone calls are made over a cellular network through mobile phones or over the internet with Voice over IP. Telephone calls are typically used for real-time conversation between two or more parties, especially when the parties cannot meet in person.
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity.
A telecommunications relay service, also known as TRS, relay service, or IP-relay, or Web-based relay service, is an operator service that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, or have a speech disorder to place calls to standard telephone users via a keyboard or assistive device. Originally, relay services were designed to be connected through a TDD, teletypewriter (TTY) or other assistive telephone device. Services gradually have expanded to include almost any real-time text capable technology such as a personal computer, laptop, mobile phone, PDA, and many other devices. The first TTY was invented by deaf scientist Robert Weitbrecht in 1964. The first relay service was established in 1974 by Converse Communications of Connecticut.
A business telephone system is a telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing the range of technology from the key telephone system (KTS) to the private branch exchange (PBX).
GSM services are a standard collection of applications and features available over the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) to mobile phone subscribers all over the world. The GSM standards are defined by the 3GPP collaboration and implemented in hardware and software by equipment manufacturers and mobile phone operators. The common standard makes it possible to use the same phones with different companies' services, or even roam into different countries. GSM is the world's most dominant mobile phone standard.
Mobile phone tracking is a process for identifying the location of a mobile phone, whether stationary or moving. Localization may be affected by a number of technologies, such as the multilateration of radio signals between (several) cell towers of the network and the phone or by simply using GNSS. To locate a mobile phone using multilateration of mobile radio signals, the phone must emit at least the idle signal to contact nearby antenna towers and does not require an active call. The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is based on the phone's signal strength to nearby antenna masts.
A VoIP phone or IP phone uses voice over IP technologies for placing and transmitting telephone calls over an IP network, such as the Internet. This is in contrast to a standard phone which uses the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN).
A voice-user interface (VUI) enables spoken human interaction with computers, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device is a device controlled with a voice user interface.
A mobile phone feature is a capability, service, or application that a mobile phone offers to its users. Mobile phones are often referred to as feature phones, and offer basic telephony. Handsets with more advanced computing ability through the use of native code try to differentiate their own products by implementing additional functions to make them more attractive to consumers. This has led to great innovation in mobile phone development over the past 20 years.
Wi-Fi calling refers to mobile phone voice calls and data that are made over IP networks using Wi-Fi, instead of the cell towers provided by cellular networks. Using this feature, compatible handsets are able to route regular cellular calls through a wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) network with broadband Internet, while seamlessly change connections between the two where necessary. This feature makes use of the Generic Access Network (GAN) protocol, also known as Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA).
Voice portals are the voice equivalent of web portals, giving access to information through spoken commands and voice responses. Ideally a voice portal could be an access point for any type of information, services, or transactions found on the Internet. Common uses include movie time listings and stock trading. In telecommunications circles, voice portals may be referred to as interactive voice response (IVR) systems, but this term also includes DTMF services. With the emergence of conversational assistants such as Apple's Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, and Samsung's Bixby, Voice Portals can now be accessed through mobile devices and Far Field voice smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home.
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network. A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that use the protocol. Introduced in 1999, WAP achieved some popularity in the early 2000s, but by the 2010s it had been largely superseded by more modern standards. Almost all modern handset internet browsers now fully support HTML, so they do not need to use WAP markup for web page compatibility, and therefore, most are no longer able to render and display pages written in WML, WAP's markup language.
On-Device Portals (ODPs) allow mobile phone users to easily browse, purchase and use mobile content and services. An ODP platform enables operators to provide a consistent and branded on-device experience across their broadening portfolio of services and typically provides on-device catalogs of content for purchase, deep links to WAP portals, customer care functionality and rich media services such as full track music, TV and video.
Telenav, Inc. is a wireless location-based services corporation that provides services including Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation, local search, automotive navigation solutions, mobile advertising, enterprise mobility and workflow automation. The company’s headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California in the United States with additional offices in the U.S., Germany, Japan, Romania, China, and Brazil.
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