Location-Based Services and Mobile Apps

A location-based service (LBS) is any application that uses a device's geographic position to deliver content or functionality tailored to that specific place, from turn-by-turn navigation to nearby-restaurant search. A significant regulatory push toward embedding location capability directly into handsets came from the US Federal Communications Commission's Enhanced 911 (E911) rules, first adopted in 1996 and tightened through subsequent orders, which required wireless carriers to be able to locate emergency callers to within roughly 50 to 300 meters depending on the positioning method used — a mandate that gave carriers and manufacturers a strong incentive to build GPS chips and network-based location technology into ordinary phones well before consumer mapping apps existed.