The numbers spell out the opportunity. According to a study by Market Research Company TNS, about 72 per cent of the 7.3 mobile phones used in Singapore today are smart phones. This translates into 5.3 million devices that are equipped with a variety of sensors such as GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and accelerometers which enable accurate location positioning to be derived both outdoors and indoors.

Herein lies the potential for developing innovative and enterprising location-based services that will bring about many benefits to both consumers and enterprises. For example, Mobile Positioning and Analytics Services (MPAS) will allow shoppers to locate amenities, shops, eateries, where their car is parked, and even their friends using their mobile devices. Merchants will be able to select certain pre-approved areas to be geo-fenced, so that whenever shoppers enter these areas, the merchants’ promotions and offers can be pushed to the shopper’s mobile device using a mobile application. Or a heat map view could be produced to show crowd density throughout a venue, allowing businesses to better understand crowd behaviour in order to optimise resources and rental yield.

The indoor positioning and analytics partner ecosystem

To tap on these opportunities, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has issued a Call for Collaboration (CFC) under its Digital Concierge programme to develop and deploy MPAS for the tourism, hospitality, retail, and the food and beverages sectors. The aim of the CFC is to establish an accurate, scalable and interoperable MPAS ecosystem and to drive the adoption of MPAS by demonstrating its business value and lowering the barriers to adoption.

As part of this initiative, an MPAS platform will be created to offer accurate, easily accessible and competitively-priced location positioning and analytics services to enterprises and consumers across multiple sectors. The platform will consist of the detection infrastructure, the location positioning and analytics shared services, enterprise services, as well as consumer services and an open positioning framework.

Key benefits of MPAS

Like the enterprise service providers, consumer service providers will make use of available shared services to provide mobile services such as navigation, finder and tracker services. For consumers, MPAS will allow them to enjoy more personalised and engaging experiences at various venues through the delivery of context-aware information and services, such as targeted advertising based on the consumer’s location and preferences, a “Shop Finder” service, a “Find Friends Near Me” service , or a “Where is My Car” service.

The Mobile Positioning and Analytics Services CFC will close on 9 July 2012. Please visit the CFC web site and the Digital Concierge Mobile Site for more information.