Skyhook’s new Always-On feature, one part of its latest 4.6 version, allows developers to grab location data as frequently as every 30 seconds with accuracy down to 10-20 meters. Ted Morgan, Skyhook’s CEO declined to explain exactly how the company is pulling this off. But he said Skyhook is building off of previous location tracking work it’s done, which downloads more data up front and processes more of the location tracking on the phone.

The previous service, which tried to optimize bandwidth, CPU processing and radios, still meant losing an hour or two of battery life over the course of a day. Now, developers don’t have to deal with any trade-offs, he said.

“We’re now getting more intimate with the way the phone is working and we’ve tuned the system to take advantage of all that,” Morgan said. 

This could be a big help for apps that want to surface local offers, highlight nearby services or aid in local people discovery. Now, the apps that use Skyhook have a better shot at delivering real location services without a major sacrifice to the overall user experience. Skyhook is currently deployed on a couple hundred apps that reach 100 million devices.

Developers of location-based apps are getting more help from the likes of Skyhook and, also, Geoloqi, a Portland, Ore. startup that also offers background location processing with very light battery usage. Geoloqi’s SDK works on iOS, something Skyhook isn’t able to do. But Morgan hopes that Apple will allow Skyhook as it sees the need to enable more background location processing.

Skyhook’s updated SDK also offers location tracking for users in airplanes. So apps using Skyhook can determine a person’s location as they fly across the country. That might give rise to some virtual pilot apps that let people know what they’re flying over and nearby points of interest. It could also be a fun addition for location-sharing apps.

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In the coming year, Wi-Fi will become a different animal than what we currently know and love. Thanks to carriers getting more involved in using Wi-Fi for network offload — as well as more devices seeking a Wi-Fi signal — this hippie technology is about to get the layers of security, authentication and manageability once reserved for cellular networks.

“Wi-Fi is just in this second renaissance,” iPass’ CEO Evan Kaplan said in an interview. “People are building out Wi-Fi like crazy, and it [has] become a viable network for carriers and changes the industry landscape and allows them to offer service they can’t get their with licensed spectrum. There is a recognition [among carriers] that there is a role for Wi-Fi, and certain mobile services should not go through the 4G core.”

Kaplan anticipates that in the next four to five years Wi-Fi will become a carrier-dominated phenomenon. Of course, Kaplan is pitching his new service, which acts like an authentication and billing layer between Wi-Fi networks and enables carriers to track and charge those who roam onto Wi-Fi networks much the way data roaming happens today. It’s an awesome concept, but it has a downside for consumers: This level of service won’t be free.

Despite his interest in carrier-dominated Wi-Fi, Kaplan isn’t alone in his views. Ronald J. de Lange, the CEO of Tekelec, a company providing carrier gear, believes that Wi-Fi is here to stay, and that carriers are looking for ways to ensure reliability and track it across their networks. He sees an opportunity for startups — such as WeFi and Skyhook, which are building Wi-Fi databases — to offer services that carriers will pay for as they seek to implement roaming and perhaps charge their end users.

It’s hard to imagine a carrier like AT&T,which operates its own Wi-Fi hot spot network, will suddenly charge users for a service it currently provides as part of its mobile broadband (and wireline) service. But once roaming is widely implemented, it could charge users a fee for access to international hot spots. Under that scenario, AT&T gets new revenue, and so do potential roaming partners AT&T could end up paying for the privilege of its subscribers roaming onto their Wi-Fi networks.

It’s also likely that other providers who aggregate services, such as Boingo or even startups such as Macheen, will gain traction as Wi-Fi becomes more integral for connectivity and thus, worth more to consumers. Even if folks don’t pay a carrier, they may pay someone be it a service like Boingo or even a retailer or device maker selling a service created by iPass or Macheen.

Even if carriers can’t find a way to milk better Wi-Fi, Kaplan is right: Wi-Fi is hot, and carriers are interested. Just last week, KDDI announced that it will build 100,000 hot spots, and earlier this year China Telecom said it would deploy 1 million. Kaplan said iPass currently authenticates users across more than 500,000 hot spots: a number Kaplan expects to rise to seven-hundred-something thousand by the end of this year.

So now that Wi-Fi is clearly hot and clearly necessary, we’ll see carriers try to monetize it. Get ready for carrier-grade Wi-Fi and a new sales pitch.

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A new feature in GPS chips is Glonass support. Glonass is the Russian equivalent of GPS, consisting of a separate set of satellites that are “visible” from around the world. By tuning into both GPS and Glonass satellites at the same time, a GPS chip can get a position fix more quickly and accurately. This approach is most useful in urban canyons, where tall buildings can block line-of-sight reception from satellites.

It’s not entirely clear what’s behind the widescale adoption of Glonass support — although the Russian government now mandates such dual support, which may have forced the issue — but it has the potential to benefit consumers. More accurate location tracking has become enormously important to advertising, services and even public safety on cell phones and other devices. Already, many phones and applications use a combination of GPS and Wi-Fi, such as that offered by Skyhook Wireless, to figure out where a subscriber is at any time.

Still, device makers may not incorporate the Glonass-capable chips into their devices sold outside of Russia, and they may not subscribe to the databases they would need in order to determine where a phone is using the system. Glonass has a storied history going back decades, but the satellite system fell into disrepair. A few years ago, Russia determined it wanted to become a satellite power again and promised to launch worldwide coverage for its Glonass system.

The project has a storied history detailed in this BBC article, which suggests the new Glonass constellation of satellites was a major publicity stunt aimed at fostering the perception that Russia had developed a viable competitor to the U.S.-sponsored GPS system when, in fact, its performance is subpar. But now, almost a year after that article was written, new satellites have launched, and it appears major chip vendors are willing to support Glonass, which means it’s up to device makers and services to launch Russia’s satellites into global prominence.

Image courtesy of NASA.

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Skyhook, if you recall, sued Google last year alleging that Google pressured Motorola and other device manufacturers to drop Skyhook’s location engine in favor of Google’s technology. The case is moving through the courts, but it has disrupted Skyhook’s work to some degree. The Boston company has responded by going back to its roots and appealing directly to app makers to get them to try the location information, which uses a variety of technologies to better identify a user’s whereabouts.

Priceline is just the latest company to agree to pay for Skyhook’s technology instead of using Google’s free service. Others like Kayak, Shopsavvy, Gowalla, Flixter and more have also made the switch back to Skyhook. In some cases, they turned to Skyhook without prompting, while in other cases, Skyhook reached out to them to sell them on the benefits of its location technology. Skyhook CEO and founder Ted Morgan said the company has signed about 100 deals with app makers to work around the loss of internal Skyhook support on Motorola and other devices.

“This (the Priceline app integration) is a prime example of our Android strategy while we deal with the unpleasantness on the device side of things,” Morgan said. “We plan to get all the top location apps in the Android Marketplace to integrate Skyhook for better location to end run around the artificial barriers that Google has set up via the device certification process.”

Skyhook used to reach out directly to app makers, but it cut back on these efforts after it started winning deals with Android manufacturers, who embedded the technology on their devices. Morgan said Skyhook’s location engine is still more robust than Google’s, and its adoption by app makers show it’s popular even when it comes with a price tag. Typically, app makers pay a portion of their ad revenue to Skyhook. Priceline said it turned to Skyhook to improve its hotel-finding app which relies on very precise location data. I’ve reached out to Google and will update if I hear back.

Morgan said Skyhook is also looking to embed its technology in e-readers, digital cameras, portable gaming devices and music players. Skyhook’s new strategy is built out of necessity but shows that companies in a mobile ecosystem need to be proactive as they work with the platform makers. Apple also announced last year that it was turning to its own location technology though it continues to maintain the same business relationship with Skyhook, Morgan said.

The lesson is for companies to remain flexible and understand that platform makers can always wade into the fray and compete with existing players. Others may come across this lesson more as Android grows in its ambitions. Google is reportedly hiring dozens of software developers to create more applications for Android, which will inevitably mean more competition for existing app makers. As Skyhook is learning, it’s not enough to be good. You have to be aware of the shifting landscape and prepare to handle changes as they come.

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Rebtel
When mobile voice goes mobile VOIP, what happens to the carriers that have made their business selling voice minutes to customers? In 1990, there were 10 billion minutes of international calling, but now it’s 400 billion minutes, according to Rebtel CEO Andres Bernstrom. But Bernstrom believes that technology has advanced so that the folks who own the pipes no longer own the connection between users. Other services are now leading the way for international calling, including Skype, Google Voice and Vonage, as they push the boundaries of technology and price. Facebook is also moving into the space, which would mark an enormous shift, as the network already owns the social graph, knows your friends, and knows who you want to talk to. The big question is who will win this trillion-dollar land grab. The answer is that it’s likely not going to be the mobile operators who own the pipes.

iPass
It used to be that having a BlackBerry handset meant workers were on a shorter leash, but now the tables have turned. According to iPass President and CEO Evan Kaplan, smartphones and new wireless capabilities have changed the global workforce. Kaplan says that a bleeding edge of 10 percent of mobile workers, led mostly by millennials, are defining the future of the mobile web. These “rainmakers,” as Kaplan calls them, use networks differently than other users do today, and show how users will work in the future. At any given time, these users have more than one device and lean toward consumer technologies, causing enterprise IT departments to follow suit. Kaplan believes that users need a new “Enterprise Mobility Bill of Rights” that allows IT departments and service providers to serve these leading users. To do that, companies need to provide connectivity all the time, allow their employees to choose the device they want to use and allow them to determine the network and the services they want to use. If enterprise and service providers do that, Kaplan says those users will be more productive and useful to their organizations.

Skyhook
Beyond mobile apps like Foursquare or Facebook, most apps aren’t made for purely social usage. But even those that aren’t implicitly social need to begin leveraging social capabilities, according to Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan. Apps that integrate social network capabilities do better than others, according to Morgan, and location is becoming a key part of that social experience. Not just that, but using social networks and using location gets people to use the app more. If you integrate social networking features, Morgan said, people become more loyal to the app.

Motricity
The mobile Internet has provided a vast opportunity for new capabilities and services on smart phones and other devices. But according to Motricity Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jim Ryan, there’s a much bigger opportunity and a better mobile experience that can be provided, designed just for end users. To do so, Ryan said mobile Internet services need to know more about you. Therefore, users have to trust the mobile carrier with their data to make service more personalized and relevant. The carriers need to act as the good stewards for data, in order for the most valuable information and data to be delivered to the end user. Ryan argued that mobile companies shouldn’t allow mobile Internet to be just the Internet on the mobile phone, but something different and something better.

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Skyhook was already facing some fierce competition from Google, which has been creating its own database of places using Wi-Fi networks (see the video interview below). The Apple news, which came out in a July 12 letter but was publicized last week, put Skyhook in the middle of the two giants trying to dominate the mobile location market. Plenty of people wondered if Skyhook was toast.

On Monday, when Skyhook put out a news release saying the company was just granted four patents related to the way it determines location using Wi-Fi networks, I called Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook, to see if the release emphasizing its new intellectual property was a coincidence.

“We think that the Wi-Fi location piece was what makes location work in general … we have invested in it, and we have been doing it longer than anyone else as proven by the 50 patents we’ve filed and the 15 awarded so far,” Morgan says. “They show we did start this and provide us some protection for what we’ve done so far.”

Morgan declined to comment when I asked if he’d sue to keep Apple, Google or anyone else off his startup’s turf, but it’s a good bet he has lawyers lined up and ready to file some infringement suits. (Because of a series of Supreme Court rulings back in 2007 most firms now sue before opening licensing agreements, making infringement lawsuits more common). Judging from the patents named in the release, Skyhook isn’t kidding around:

11/774,399: System and method of improving sample of WLAN packet information to improve Doppler frequency of a WLAN positioning device.
11/950,178: Location-based services that choose location algorithms based on number of detected access points within range of a user device.
11/950,242: Location-based services that choose location algorithms based on number of detected access points within range of a user device.
11/430,079: Estimation of speed and direction of travel in a WLAN positioning system.

It’s a good bet that Apple and Google aren’t kidding around either. As the web goes mobile, and the phone becomes the platform for the next generation of technology innovation, owning the underlying positioning data isn’t just a source of revenue from application companies seeking to find out where users are to offer them services; it’s a source of demographic information that could be valuable to many.”Location is a cornerstone of mobile and we’re sitting in the middle of it,” said Morgan.

While application providers can offer advertisers information about specific users, Morgan maintains that the information Skyhook can provide (or Google or Apple) is much broader, allowing demographers, advertisers or researchers to understand where people are. As opposed to deep information on a person that a service like Fourquare can provide, Skyhook can offer a breadth of information about an entire city’s movements. Morgan claims he has information on 100 million users and can get it regardless of the app they might use.

Since I caught him after a board meeting, I asked Morgan what the mood was when he met with his investors. He responded, ”The mood was positive. Not every fund is managing a startup that gets in the middle of a major technology battle. If we’re smart about this, we’ll end up a major technology company, and if not, we’ll end up squashed. It’s worse if no one cares about you.”

That’s what I love about entrepreneurs. Put them between a rock and hard place, (or Apple and Google) and they’ll find the bright side. For more on Skyhook’s dilemma, check out the interview I did with Morgan from the end of April when we discussed its looming fight with Google.

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Rosum has been selling the idea of using broadcast TV to determine location for a while. But we already have two methods of measuring location — GPS, which uses a satellite signal and a database, and Wi-Fi triangulation as used by Skyhook. Do we really need a third?

Wi-Fi location information is faster and works better in urban areas where GPS signals have a hard time penetrating. GPS works where there are no Wi-Fi networks, such as in rural areas or along highways. So what does Rosum’s broadcast TV solution have to offer? Rosum says it’s for areas where Wi-Fi networks aren’t able to penetrate, such as deep inside buildings, or where there are a lot of networks that may confuse location, such as in highly urban areas. However, Wi-Fi still seems to work well even in those situations.

There’s also the issue of putting a separate broadcast TV chip inside a device. Wi-Fi chips are already embedded in many handsets and devices, and provide a primary function outside of delivering location. GPS chips are also becoming more common for mobile devices that don’t have Wi-Fi, or that offer navigation. However for many devices, using Wi-Fi alone will suffice.

But Rosum’s primary function is location, and relies on grabbing broadcast TV signals.
So to take advantage of the Rosum solution, a device would have to need a broadcast television signal and not need Wi-Fi or GPS. How often does this happen? I can’t think of a reason to add a broadcast TV signal-detecting chip to a femotcell, but I can see a reason to add Wi-Fi. I can see Rosum winning customers among device-makers wanting to add location to the mobile televisions that will use the Open Mobile Video Coalition’s standard for mobile TV, but that’s a young and small market.

For now, I’m highly skeptical as to Rosum’s chances for making broadcast signals a third source of location information. Yes, location is hot, but between Wi-Fi and GPS, broadcast TV looks more like a third wheel.

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At first I thought the module might do for location what the Kindle has done for electronic readers or what the iPod did for stand-alone music devices — basically act as a single-purpose device for providing location and applications that could use it. Here’s the description:

The removable module may store subscription information, personal information, and/or other information for a user and may be inserted into a terminal, e.g., a cellular phone. The removable module may include LBS applications that may utilize location information to perform various actions. The location information may comprise a location estimate, speed, orientation, etc., of the terminal.

In other words, my location would become an accessory that I could plug in when I elect to share with people where I am and what I’m doing, rather than something tied to a particular device with complicated steps for turning location sharing on and off. Plus, I could use a variety of location apps that work with the module rather than applications that work with a specific phone.

Since the device would have my location as well as my location-using applications, I checked with some developers and those in the industry to see how something like this would play out. Rahul Sonnad, CEO of Geodelic, which makes the Sherpa application, said that most of the functionality Qualcomm seems to have developed with this module is already available as part of various web-connected platforms like Facebook Connect. He added, “I’m sure I would lose this module, and my location would be lost with it. And then where would I be?”

Without a location module, many of us might not know. All kidding aside, Sonnad’s point about already having the functionality is the key here. Sonnad as well as Ted Morgan, the CEO of Skyhook, which provides a Wi-Fi database to determine a user’s location, think that thanks to Apple, Google and other platforms already offering location services on myriad devices and shared between a variety of web-based technologies, the opportunity ship has sailed. And it’s sailed without Qualcomm. What do you guys think?

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Chokola. Diagram image courtesy of GoRumors.

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This focus on paid makes sense, given that grabbing location information generally costs the developer money, but it also means that location should add real value to an application instead of being a trendy feature. Right now, it’s not clear if location is like salt and works in everything, or if its more akin to cumin or another spice that works well only in certain types of dishes.The report also broke out the most popular category of applications that were using location information by app store and calculated the average cost of an LBS app by store. Check it out:

Apple App Store: Navigation, $3.47

BlackBerry App World: Navigation, $11.70

Android Marketplace: Travel, $1

Palm App Catalog: Entertainment, free (currently the Palm store has no paid apps)

Nokia Ovi Store: Utilities, $3.11

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