WaveMarket opens location-aggregation platform to developers

Location-based services (LBS) pioneer WaveMarket today opened up Veriplace, its privacy-protected location aggregation platform, to all developers in North America. The standards-based open location and privacy service takes the onus off of carriers for approving and monitoring LBS on their handsets. Its first announced carrier partner is Sprint (NYSE:S).

“This is the first platform that a US application developer can log on and swipe their credit card, buy location and launch a service,” said WaveMarket Chief Executive Officer Tasso Roumeliotis. “In terms of accessing location from other carriers, any long-tail developer couldn’t do that before. This is a big development.”

The platform gives third-party developers live access to the location data of mobile phone customers so that they can location-enable their web, WAP, SMS, widget or mobile application on Veriplace's Developer Web site. The platform works on an opt-in basis. Consumers give their permission to be tracked but can revoke it or limit it to certain vendors and services at any time via the Veriplace Website, which is usually linked to on the app they are using. Consumers can also visit the site to see a complete history of who has located them and when.

From a developer’s perspective, Veriplace lets them avoid the long, labor-intensive process of contacting the carrier, requesting – and often being denied – access to its location information and waiting for approval to launch. From the carrier’s perspective, Roumeliotis said, they can avoid the same long process by turning responsibility over to WaveMarket, which gained prominence in LBS with its Family Locator products offered by many major carriers, including Sprint and Alltel. Roumeliotis said he expects the first beta developers to launch commercially in a matter of weeks.

“Developers, without having to pick up the phone and call Sprint, they can pretty much log on, write to an API, submit their app and get it approved days later and have full location access to a 50-million-subscriber base for their applications,” Roumeliotis said. “It is an iPhone-like experience for developers, but accessing 50 million phones, not just the 7 to 8 million iPhones.”

Developers can also get access to location data from multiple carriers on the site, so that – for example – a social networking app can access location data and privacy settings of users on different carriers via a single API. They can then streamline the launch of their app without needing separate agreements with each carrier.

WaveMarket has been using Veriplace since the company’s inception but only started marketing it at last year's CTIA IT Entertainment & Wireless show in response to customer concerns about the level of access that family-tracking services gave to carriers. At the time, the service was run by the carriers themselves as an auditing tool for the developers they let on their network. The carrier would provide the baseline guidelines for using location, as well as cut off any company that violated them.

Carriers have started to embrace LBS, especially as location permeates all the other apps and services on the phone as well. Privacy concerns remain the number-one hesitation for most, however. In addition to the consumer controls, Veriplace performs regular security systems checks on developer partners to make sure they comply with security measures, as well as tracks all location attempts by the technology used, developer and user to support subscription, per-locate, and ad-supported revenue models.

Hybrid location provider Skyhook Wireless also released a report today that found a great disparity in the cost of location apps on Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Marketplace and BlackBerry App World. The average price of a location-aware app on Blackberry is $13.60, compared with $3.60 in the iTunes App Store and $0.84 on Android. Apple has more than 2,300 location-based apps, more than 75% of which come at a cost. BlackBerry charges for 67% of its location apps, while only 20% cost money on Android. In total, Skyhook identified 17 different types of location apps, with the most popular being related to travel, navigation and social networking.

In other location news today, wireless technology provider TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) acquired LocationLogic, an LBS company that powers Verizon’s Chaperone service and Sprint’s Mobile locator, which lets small-and-medium-sized businesses track and communicate with field workers.