Consumers clamouring for mobile trackers

A recent study claims that US consumers are hungry for new location-based mobile services such as phone tracking features for location-based social networking.

Not surprisingly, the study by Jupiter Research found that parents with young children were most interested in the location-based services. The research firm reported that 42 per cent of mobile owners with children under the age of 13 would be interested in a mobile service that tracks the location of the child.

Disney launched a service last year with a similar feature. The company has estimated that roughly 30 per cent of its subscribers use phone-tracking.

Protective parents were not the only group expressing an interest in location-based services.

The study found that 26 per cent of mobile phone owners between the ages of 18 and 24 would be willing to pay extra for a social-networking service that would track friends' locations.

Location-based mobile services have been slow to gather steam. The report noted that currently just three per cent of users make any use of location-based services such as GPS and navigation offerings.

Analysts, however, are optimistic about the long-term outlook for location-based services.

Research firm In Stat predicted in a July report that the Chinese market for the services would soon take off.

The firm also forecasts that the US market for location-based offerings will balloon to 1.1m users over the next three years.