Location-based services may still be at its infancy in India. But consumers in Europe at set to adopt the service significantly suggests a new research by Berg Insight. The number of subscribers in the region are set to reach the 130 million mark by 2014 as compared to 20 million in 2008.

The applications which are expected to drive the services include local search, navigation services and social networking. The growth in subscribers will be at a CAGR of 37%.

According to senior analyst André Malm, “The key enablers for LBS are rapidly falling into place. On-device application stores allow easier access to mobile services for a broader audience at the same time as flat-rate data plans make pricing more transparent. In conjunction with more operators opening their location platforms to third parties, location aggregators have started to provide common APIs for accessing location data from multiple operators. This together with ever growing GPS handset sales will allow more application developers to create location-enabled mobile applications,” said Berg Insight senior analyst Andre Malm.

The research estimates that more than 20 % of mobile handsets to be shipped in 2009 will have GPS capability.

As per the research navigational and tracking services will continue to command a premium.

The research says that mobile advertising appears to be the preferred mode for most of the service providers but the ecosystem for the same is highly fragmented and immature. The research says that it will take several years to identify a viable business model which will reach out to most of the active users.  “Besides monthly subscriptions and per-use fees, service providers will increasingly offer one-time fees, service bundles or device bundles to match consumer expectations” added Malm.