What makes Location-Based Services Fail? Gerhard Navratil and Eva Grum TU Vienna, Institute for Geoinformation and Cartography 3rd Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography, 28th to 30th November, 2005, Vienna, Austria Abstract. A lot of research projects deal with location-based services and also telephone providers started services. Some services fail to become an economic success. In this paper we investigate possible pitfalls for location-based services. The categories of pitfalls are technical possibilities, legal restrictions, and usability. Using two example services we show how to determine the possible pitfalls. 1. Introduction Discussions on location-based services (LBS) started in 2000 (Laurini 2000; Winter, Pontikakis et al. 2001). Since then a number of LBS was started by mobile operators. According to Berg Insight AB (2005) the revenues from LBS’s for Europe in 2004 was over 100 million Euro and they expect the number to grow by 2000% in 5 years. Not all LBS’s are economically successful. The Austrian mobile operator ONE, for example, cut the efforts on the sector of LBS in 2004. Failure of a service can be viewed from two perspectives. The user defines failure as ‘costs are higher than the benefit’. This includes, for example, wrong or too expensive information. The service provider defines failure as ‘not profitable’. If the costs for the service are higher than the revenue (including indirect revenue like advertisement) the service is a failure. In this paper we discuss the problem from the view of a service provider. Services create costs for the service provider and thus the service should produce benefit for the service provider to justify the expenses. Pitfalls may prohibit the benefit. Thus identifying pitfalls is important for developing location-based services. Availability of data sets is influenced by three major aspects: Technical possibility, legal restrictions, usability (Navratil and Frank 2005). We assume that this structure does also apply for the success of LBS and the aspects, which let LBS fail, can be grouped into technology, legality, and usability and their interrelations. In this paper we use two examples to show how to identify possible pitfalls. The examples are LBS, which do not yet exist but could be implemented. We assume that the LBS is designed for mobile phones only since according to Rümenapp and Gutsche until 2015 98% of the population in Germany between 15 and 55 years own a mobile phone (Rüpemapp and Gutsche 2003). Other European countries will have similar numbers. We discuss the examples from the different perspectives defined above. In the first step we look at the technical status. The next step refers to limitations imposed by the Austrian law. Finally we look at the usability. In the end we discuss interrelations between these aspects. This discussion shows that the aspects are often linked together. 2. Examples Two examples shall provide the framework for this paper. The first example shows how LBS can be used to improve the international emergency call 122. The second example deals with pedestrian navigation in a very specific case: navigation at dealer shows. 2.1. LBS for emergency calls The phone number 112 without any prefix is a European emergency call. 47 countries are involved in this program (European Union 2005). A call to 122 is routed to the closest emergency operator. He is connected to the emergency services in his area like police, ambulance, and fire brigade.