Positioning phones to create new social networks

By Niclas Mika

PARIS (Reuters) - Finding friends and meeting new ones could become even more important uses for global positioning chips than getting from A to B as the technology spreads to cell phones in coming years.

Combined with mobile Internet access, GPS (global positioning system) is seen in the industry as adding a new dimension to social networking that could also have implications for the media business.

"GPS tells me that today I'm sitting somewhere at 48 degrees north, 2 degrees east. Is that really that much value if I know I'm sitting in Paris?" said Miles Flint, head of mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson.

But he saw that changing in future.

"One of the more compelling things that we might use every day is the integration of that information into knowing where my friends are," he told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris this week.

GPS chips use satellites orbiting the earth to determine the exact position of the user. They are found in car navigation systems, which have surged in popularity in recent years, and the technology is now making the jump to mobile phones.

Once people can physically find those they want to more easily -- as long as those others want to be found -- it can enhance the establishment of growing Internet social networks such as News Corp.'s MySpace site.

"'Your communities in your pocket,' I think that explains where we're headed quite well," Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said earlier this month at a shareholders meeting.

UPTAKE SPEED

Industry executives still disagree over how quickly satellite navigation will find its way into phones.

The chief executive of chip maker CSR, John Scarisbrick, told the Reuters Summit his company was expecting to see a quick uptake of GPS chips in phones as prices fall.

But Alain De Taeye, chief executive of digital map supplier Tele Atlas, voiced doubts.

"I'm incredibly enthusiastic about the opportunities. However, the last time I was incredibly enthusiastic about the opportunities, it took 20 years to realize them," De Taeye said.

"Market research predicts that 25 percent of phones in 2010 will have GPS. I would be a bit more cautious."

Nokia is already betting on GPS-enabled phones and most top handset suppliers are expected to come out with models soon, though Flint gave no date for when Sony Ericsson would start building GPS into its phones.  Continued...