The Gold Rush in GPS-based Mobile Phone Services

Posted by: Steve Hamm on July 09

Now that GPS and compasses are standard equipment in most smartphones, the rush to provide innovative location-based services is on. These are pioneering days. Beyond a few no-brainers like basic navigation, nobody knows exactly which services will get traction. The next phase of the competition between the smartphone makers like Apple, RIM, and Nokia will be for the hearts and minds of the location-based service creators.

One of the industry pioneers is John Ziskind, co-founder and CEO of ZOS Communications. Ziskind honed his competitive edge as an Americas Cup sailor, where he lived and breathed GPS pinging to keep the boats on track. ZOS Communication’s core technology is server software called the ZOS engine, which integrates location and other data and delivers it real time to mobile devices via wireless networks.

The company’s first service, launched a month ago, is Zhiing, a location-based messaging service for consumers. Using an instant-messaging-like interface, people can send and get turn-by turn directions to a location and information about what’s nearby. Ziskind also plans services for businesses and government agencies. For instance, a Rochester ambulance company is testing the technology for use in locating victims fast.

Ziskind and his colleagues had some big decisions to make as they developed their technology and services. Chief among them was which smartphone platforms should they design services for. In the end, they did the incredibly hard thing of writing services for all of the major platforms: RIM, iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. Most startups will probably pick two or three, for starters.

Ziskind’s experience with RIM shows just how willing the big players are to provide help for promising young startups. ZOS chose RIM as its primary development platform because of its dominant share of the enterprise smartphone market. It took about six months of persistent calling for Ziskind to get RIM’s attention. “”I’m relentless,” he says. “You’ve got to be if you want to participate in something like the Americas Cup.” But finally he broke through and has developed what he thinks of as a partnership with RIM. His engineers get to tap directly in to RIM’s product development engineers, and ZOS got early access to RIM’s Blackberry Push technology. The result of all of this collaboration, Ziskind says, is super-accurate positioning.

ZOS has cleared its first hurdle. It has its basic technology built and has launched its first consumer service. An enterprise service is due out later this summer.

Now Ziskind is looking for venture funding. (The company got this far with angel money.) If Ziskind goes after venture capitalists with the relentlessness he pursued the smartphone makers, he shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

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