Market Trends of Canada Location-Based Services Industry
Indoor Location Segment is Expected to Hold Significant Share of the Market
- Indoor LBS is gradually gaining traction due to the increasing penetration of smartphones, the development of sensor technology, and the increase in indoor time. Sensor technology has enabled smart networks to receive data from a smartphone without installing additional devices, making smartphones the most commonly used data source for indoor positioning.
- These sensors or hot spots are called bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons, which are used to locate devices and users inside a building. Other kinds of indoor positioning being used by organizations are Wi-Fi and Geomagnetic. Thus, IT managers, marketing managers, facilities personnel, and other stakeholders are responsible for purchasing, installing, and maintaining these systems. Indoor tracking applications are beneficial in indoor location tracking/positioning, proximity marketing, and real-time Wayfinding for large facilities, such as airports, hospitals, stadiums, and convention centers.
- There is active research on designing and implementing an indoor positioning platform to back the development of future location-based 5G network functionalities and services. However, the built-in smartphone sensors' readings are easily affected by the surrounding environment and are occasionally different from each other, which adversely influences the accuracy of indoor positioning.
- For instance, the built-in gyroscope sensor and the magnetometer sensor can be used to measure a user's heading direction, which may be different from each other and occasionally from themselves. As a result, this error accumulates, and the user's position may become increasingly inaccurate. Also, the reliability and availability of indoor positioning technologies, up-to-date indoor maps, and privacy concerns associated with location data are some of the most significant challenges to indoor LBS.
- Data from GSMA Intelligence shows 38.04 million cellular mobile connections in Canada at the start of 2023. GSMA Intelligence's numbers indicate that mobile connections in Canada were equivalent to 98.5 percent of the total population in January 2023. Mobile connections in Canada increased by 1.7 million (+4.7 percent) between 2022 and 2023. In several cases, installation and integration services are highly prominent in the market, owing to increased customized and indoor LBS solutions. Installation of hardware and integration of custom technologies into locally deployed applications, etc., are some of the professional services growing faster in the market.
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Transportation and Logistics Segment Expected to Hold Significant Share of the Market
- Location-based services find various applications in the transportation industry. In commercial transportation, these services are primarily used in autonomous vehicles or connected vehicles with intelligent devices and advanced features, like GPS and A-GPS, mainly used for location-based services like maps or navigation.
- In transportation, these services are also used for location-based information services, which include the localization of speed cameras, available parking spots, traffic alerts, and dynamic weather updates. Autonomous vehicles are gaining significant traction, with various multinational companies making strides in developing the required technologies.
- Many companies have also been identified as following this trend, which is expected to drive the increase in adoption of autonomous vehicles over the forecast period. Additionally, multinational technological firms, like Facebook, Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc., and Amazon, have been identified as spending heavily on the development of AI-powered cars, thus further propelling the market growth.
- The advent of autonomous vehicles has also resulted in the rise of connected cars, whether vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure, which is expected to augment the growth of the market studied. Navigational maps and live traffic details have been a powerful tool for the automotive industry. They are expected to be even more crucial now, with the vehicle connectivity requirement. The expanded number of sensors incorporated in current vehicles, owing to the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), has initiated the vendors in the market to innovate their services. For example, HERE is a map and content provider trying to incorporate more information in maps.
- Moreover, advancements in LBS have improved the methods of monitoring and tracking the ships in the recent past. Global satellite services have made ship tracking across the world easier, thus ensuring the safety of vessels from various threats. With the help of transponders installed on the vessels, the satellite collects signals from the vessels to provide their position, route, speed, and ship type. Further, platforms such as Google have improved the ship tracking process, allowing access to minute details of almost all ships within a location.
- According to Statcan, in 2022, Canada exported goods and services worth about CAD 936.25 billion. The infotainment industry is also embracing LBS. In-car infotainment holds opportunities to understand and predict customer needs from consuming content. When the data from infotainment and vehicle are combined, there is a great possibility to cater to the listeners with personalized content.
