Building a framework to characterize location-based services

This contribution proposes a feature-based framework to analyze mobile location based services (LBS) with the purpose of shedding some light on relevant aspects that may be relevant when defining sustainable business models. The framework is built from a survey and categorization of current commercial services, which also aims at representing the current LBS commercial state. Elaborating on this survey, a number of issues that impact on LBS business model sustainability are identified. The framework is not focused on traditional technical system descriptors (accuracy, coverage...), but on user´s experience related factors (e.g. service provision environments, user´s devices functionalities, service´s interactivity schemes, contents needs or privacy requirements) and on market and business concerns (related to the service´s value chain composition, its commercialization channels or its revenue model). Some commercial mobile location services (with different functionalities and technological enablers) are reviewed under the suggested perspective.