In a special issue of the Journal towards the end of 2007 which focused on mobile marketing, I explored, in my editorial, aspects of the enormous potential of the mobile channel for market targeting and analysis purposes. But I also commented that the development of mobile channels themselves, as well as the attitudes adopted to them by consumers, was both ‘fluid and highly unpredictable’ and it was SMS marketing rather than the use of the mobile web which dominated thinking. At the time of writing, Apple had just launched its iPhone and Google Android was imminent. Writing 2 years later, it is clear that the topic is worth some re-examination. Certainly, we have seen some significant investment and developments among handset and technology companies. For example, we have witnessed exponential growth of the high-end iPhone handset (with sales of 22 million units by the middle of 2009). Google's own Android operating system is available on phones being sold across 22 markets, with major handset manufacturers such as LG Sony Ericsson and Samsung expressing interest. But can we see a similar frenzy of activity by marketers? And how have consumers responded? Of course, the market's a complex one and, while new mobile communication paths are being explored, most companies are still feeling their way with experimental approaches; two developments in the market mean that marketing opportunities are now ripe for development. These are the growth of GPS capability in handsets, and the exponential growth of free or cheap downloadable third-party applications and mobile web interfaces being designed increasingly as part of an integrated go-to-market package, rather than as an afterthought or experiment by firms. Analysts Gartner estimate that some 29 per cent of new phone handsets will include GPS in 2009. And, at the time of writing, some 100 000 applications have been developed in the iPhone App Store, with over 2 billion total downloads.

The combination of these two developments can be seen in the growth of genuinely location-based service applications. Now, so-called LBS applications have been around for some time and have often been described as ‘solutions in search of problems’. But early implementations were clunky and unreliable, GPS expensive and not widely available and consumers were unused to or unwilling to pay significantly for such information. Contemporary applications show much greater promise. We can consider contemporary LBS services across two broad dimensions: the extent to which they are personal or social applications, and whether they are push or pull in orientation. Applications such as physical asset or information tracking tend to be user-initiated, while geographically targeted incentives (such as proximity promotions), or applications such as child location or congestion alerts are pushed to the user. On the other axis, we can distinguish between personal productivity tools such as local train departure information, against social apps (such as ‘who is tweeting nearby?' or ‘where are my friends?'). Each type of application offers different opportunities for marketers, although while clearly push-based apps are more attractive for market targeting purposes, the reality is that users may prefer to retain control of the interaction.

Branded pull-based personal apps include that launched in March 2009 by UK discount hotelier Travelodge, which provides a simple interface to allow the user to find, price and book the nearest Travelodge to their location. Similarly, Tesco Finder provides an on-request shelf lookup and pricing service for individual items in the user's nearest store (‘Sausage rolls are in aisle 2, 8 units along and 2 shelves up. And by the way, we’re offering any two for £1.50’). Push-based personal apps rely on responding to profile or stored alert information in a proactive way. Zillow's Real Estate app will push-notify you of new property for sale near your current location. Aloqua is a mobile search engine, which proactively notifies the user of interesting places, events and Facebook friends near you (www.aloqa.com). The user can select ‘channels’ (such as pizza outlets, movies, concerts and medical facilities) and determine the extent of ‘proactive notification’ of particular events, such as a voucher available in the area, to a child leaving a safety zone.

Social apps, on the other hand, are reliant on network effects to create sufficient critical mass to be useful to both users and to marketers. Social apps with push-based capabilities include Centrl, (www.centrl.com), Brightkite (www.brightkite.com), Foursquare (foursquare.com) and Google Latitude (www.google.com/latitude). Most will notify the user of friends in the vicinity. For example, Foursquare allows the user to ‘check-in’ wherever they are and will tell the user's friends where they can find them and recommend places to go and things to do. But services such as Centrl offer to push money-saving deals to them too.

While social apps are less well developed than personal apps and push apps less than pull apps, many think that the future lies in ‘social push’. It is here, too, that marketers may begin to use mobile apps as tools to understand social behaviour rather than just individual behaviour, and to incentivise it accordingly. The next 2 years should be quite interesting. As one blogger put it recently: ‘mobile applications without context provided by LBS will be like pizza without cheese’.