Sprint Nextel Corp. said it plans on Monday to kick off a local directory cellphone service with information such as driving directions and movie times as it aims to boost revenue by having customers use their phones for more than just talking.
The $2.99 a month service, called "Find It", combines location aware phones and directory information from InfoSpace Inc. that lets users search out locations without having to enter a postal code or even know where they are.
U.S. operators are required by law to put positioning technology in their cellphones that allows safety workers such as police to pinpoint a mobile caller's location in an emergency.
They have long talked about using this technology to offer commercial services, although, like many data services such as cellphone Web surfing, such services have been slow to emerge in the mainstream.
But the service from the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider may be the first with potential to create mass appeal as it is easy to use and was designed to work on 70 percent of the service provider's roughly 48 million subscribers' phones from the most expensive to the cheapest, according to analysts.
"For most mainstream consumers I don't think they've had the option to have an application like this before," said M:Metrics analyst Mark Donovan, who believes consumers are more likely to use their cellphone to find information when they are not obliged to type in location details.
Existing services, including a local search service from the most popular Web search engine Google Inc., are more awkward to use on cellphones than the InfoSpace offering which was designed specifically for phones, the analyst said.
"What's very elegant about what they've done is they've made it possible for me to search a wide range of information using just my thumb and a single button on the phone," said Donovan, noting that if for example the user searches for a movie, details of nearby restaurants and ATMs are also shown.
Initially Sprint and InfoSpace do not plan to charge businesses for being listed in the directory but such services are eventually expected to create advertising revenue.
InfoSpace Chief Executive Jim Voelker said the company could charge merchants for example if they are put in a prominent place in the list or if they want to display coupons for free coffee or ads indicating current sale products.
"I think that stuff will develop over the next few years," Voelker said in a recent interview.
Kelsey Group analyst Neal Polachek estimates that the advertising market around such services could worth $561 million a year by 2010 but he said it "could be significantly
more than that," if services like InfoSpaces gain popularity.
Voelker said the agreement with Sprint was not exclusive and that InfoSpace is talking to several other mobile service providers about providing the directory product.
The $2.99 a month service, called "Find It", combines location aware phones and directory information from InfoSpace Inc. that lets users search out locations without having to enter a postal code or even know where they are.
U.S. operators are required by law to put positioning technology in their cellphones that allows safety workers such as police to pinpoint a mobile caller's location in an emergency.
They have long talked about using this technology to offer commercial services, although, like many data services such as cellphone Web surfing, such services have been slow to emerge in the mainstream.
But the service from the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider may be the first with potential to create mass appeal as it is easy to use and was designed to work on 70 percent of the service provider's roughly 48 million subscribers' phones from the most expensive to the cheapest, according to analysts.
"For most mainstream consumers I don't think they've had the option to have an application like this before," said M:Metrics analyst Mark Donovan, who believes consumers are more likely to use their cellphone to find information when they are not obliged to type in location details.
Existing services, including a local search service from the most popular Web search engine Google Inc., are more awkward to use on cellphones than the InfoSpace offering which was designed specifically for phones, the analyst said.
"What's very elegant about what they've done is they've made it possible for me to search a wide range of information using just my thumb and a single button on the phone," said Donovan, noting that if for example the user searches for a movie, details of nearby restaurants and ATMs are also shown.
Initially Sprint and InfoSpace do not plan to charge businesses for being listed in the directory but such services are eventually expected to create advertising revenue.
InfoSpace Chief Executive Jim Voelker said the company could charge merchants for example if they are put in a prominent place in the list or if they want to display coupons for free coffee or ads indicating current sale products.
"I think that stuff will develop over the next few years," Voelker said in a recent interview.
Kelsey Group analyst Neal Polachek estimates that the advertising market around such services could worth $561 million a year by 2010 but he said it "could be significantly
more than that," if services like InfoSpaces gain popularity.
Voelker said the agreement with Sprint was not exclusive and that InfoSpace is talking to several other mobile service providers about providing the directory product.
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