The Latest Technology Is a Matter of Location; It Helps Find What You Want, or Where You Are
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter
You've heard of consumer e-commerce (B2C) and business-to-business e-commerce (B2B). Now a Bainbridge Island technology company is pioneering what it calls L-commerce, or location commerce.
Airbiquity, founded in 1997 by Dan Preston and Jim Vroman, has developed a wireless technology to deliver location-based information directly to consumers' mobile phones.
For example, a truck driver who is getting low on fuel would be able to check his or her wireless phone to locate a nearby gas station. Or shoppers in a mall could receive targeted coupons at a nearby bookstore.
"L-commerce is the willingness to pay for convenience and the importance of having someone else know where you are located," said Dan Allen, IDC president and chief executive. "If your car breaks down on a road between North Bend and Snoqualmie Pass, it is important for the auto club to know where you are at."
It may sound Orwellian. But it is a market that Washington, D.C., research firm The Strategis Group estimates will grow to $3.9 billion in the next four years. Other research firms predict it will be the next big trend in wireless communications.
Some heavy hitters in the local technology community agree. And they are betting that Integrated Data Communications will lead the way in the emerging market.
Steven Hooper, former president of AT&T Wireless; Naveen Jain, chief executive of InfoSpace Inc.; Wayne Perry, vice chairman of Nextlink Communications; and Rufus Lumry III, president of Acorn Ventures, plan to announce a $17.5 million investment in the 3-year-old company today.
Additional strategic investors include InfoSpace, Broe Growth Capital and Madrona Venture Group. Total financing in the 45-person company now stands at $22 million.
Bundled in wireless phones, the company's software works with global positioning system technology to pinpoint a person's longitude and latitude. It can get within 40 feet of a mobile-phone user, said Allen, a telecommunications veteran and former president of Nextel's mid-Atlantic region.
IDC has already inked one deal with a wireless phone manufacturer. Allen declined to name the company. But he said the service should begin appearing on some mobile phones by the end of the year. Although plenty of competition is attacking the market, Allen said the biggest competitor is the "status quo" and getting people to "understand the value of location technology."
Along with business applications such as managing the location of a trucking fleet, Allen said the technology also could be used for tracking elderly parents or teenagers.
Of course, that brings up the issue of privacy. But Allen said his company has that covered.
"One of the unique things about the IDC technology is that it can be enabled or disabled by the user," he said.
Vroman and Preston, formerly of Advanced Technologies Company, founded IDC after developing a communications package for an emergency response center at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.