Mobile Location Based Services for Mountaineering

Smart phones are widely accepted and popular with navigation and route guidance functionality becoming a standard feature. Locations based services, henceforth referred to as LBS in this document, are used in various contexts and are becoming more accessible with the wide adoption of mobile smart phones. Industry experts expect that Location based services to be a major success and will account for large market share and profits in mobile services. Service providers in this area are coming up with innovative services trying to grab a share in this potential area. On the other hand, there is also some pessimism on the pace at which LBS taking-off in practice due to various reasons. For any service or business to be successful it should create value to the end-users. There are many key players involved to make LBS realizable and providing value, which include technology providers, service providers, telecom companies, regulation and standardization bodies and end-users. This thesis is a literature review of LBS and its general applications in real world with emphasis on its use in mountaineering. Scope of this literature review is to study the components of LBS, its architecture, positioning techniques, general application area, established standards and potential business model. While emphasizing LBS use in mountaineering, a concluded LBS demo project for mountaineering, sponsored by Eu-ropean Commission, called PARAMOUNT (Public Safety & Commercial Info-Mobility Applications & Services in the Mountains) is taken as reference. From business pers-pective, a conceptual business model called STOF (Service, Technology, Organization and Finance) model is used to analyze PARAMOUNT. /Kir1