Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile industry conference and exhibition, held in Barcelona last week has showcased some ground-breaking technology and inspiring discussions among the world’s top mobile industry leaders. The followings are three top terms that could disrupt and pave a new direction to the geospatial industry.
5G
There is no definitive idea of what 5G technology will be like but global leaders of the telecom industry, as in the likes of Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson, etc are convinced that speed-breaking 5G connectivity will arrive in 2020. it is something they’re ready to invest on in the next 6 years. With the availability of such pervasive high-speed mobile services, the extend of geospatial mobile applications and business generation is only limited by our own imagination.
Internet of Things and M2M
Telecom companies, automotive industries, and even home appliances manufacturers are now connecting their devices through sensors towards smart living concept. GSMA with AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, KT and Vodafone demonstrated how latest mobile innovations are improving consumers lives through their Connected City pavilion. The City also featured solutions from IBM, Accenture, Ericsson, General Motors, and many others. It’s an open-door for the geospatial industry to demonstrate technology integration that could bring greater automation, intelligent routing and transportation, better monitoring, and better city management in the connected city concept.
Indoor Positioning
There were good number of LBS companies present at the exhibition. While outdoor navigation service/application providers like ALK Technologies, ASCAMM, Emixis, Geosho, INRIX (to name a few) showcased geospatial capability in fleet, asset management, logistics, tourism and business intelligence, most of the indoor positioning technology are still not yet spatially-enabled. As people spend a lot of time indoors, office complexes, shopping malls, campuses, hospitals, etc, could use some intelligent navigation system. Indoor GIS/CAD mapping is definitely a new niche to be explored.
