Greetings!,
On Sept. 11, 2010 Japan launched the "Michibiki" satellite - the first of several quasi-zenith satellites (QZSS) - to augment traditional GPS, and experiments achieved 3cm spatial resolution in a moving car.
Japan's Government has sofar invested about US$ 1 billion into rolling out QZSS, and it is estimated that this investment will create new location based industries worth about US$ 12 billion sales/year.
Michibiki follows a figure-8 path, spending about 8 hours/day over Japan, so that at least two more satellites are necessary to give 24 hour coverage for Japan. Greater spatial resolution is not the only attraction of the new QZSS system. Mibichiki and its planned colleagues will also provide better coverage of "urban canyons" - the space between and close to high-rise buildings. Another development area are "indoor satellites" - beacons to allow position determination inside buildings and underground.
The world's first location based services (LBS) for mobile phones is DoCoMo's i-Area service, introduced in July 2001 - almost 10 years ago. Today about 90% of Japan's mobile phones in circulation are equipped with GPS, and mobile LBS are a thriving new industry sector with an upcoming IPO - read our mobile LBS report for details.
In our next newsletter we'll write about an up-coming IPO of a Japanese company purely focused on location based services/navigation for mobile phones.
|