Location Services, which are best described as the intersection of Web, wireless and GIS technologies, allow one to exploit location information anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Analysts are already predicting that wireless location services will be a $9.75 billion market worldwide by 2005.

Mobile phones are the most widely used form of wireless device, and therefore offer the greatest potential market for Location Services. While some mobile device manufacturers have embedded, or plan to embed, location-based services in their mobile devices, existing mobile phone users will be able to benefit from an increasing variety of location-based services as the accuracy with which a service provider is able to triangulate their position improves. This opens up a plethora of new services and business opportunities which were previously unavailable, or limited in efficiency/effectiveness.

Our work has focused on developing a set of low level API that allows the user to create their own customized, scaled-down location-based services application, which contains only the tools required for their particular need. While many of the Location Services are fairly simple, our approach would allow one to create a framework in which one could combine Location Services to create more sophisticated tools, as well as allowing further processing of the results obtained from Location Services. For example, a potential homebuyer could make use of a Real Estate Location Service that provided a map showing a number of houses that were for sale. The potential client could then overlay a map provided by a traffic routing Location Service to determine the level of congestion on the roads between each house and his/her work premises. Now Location Service developers are able to develop new Location Services without duplicating existing functionality.