Sprint Nextel announced two new services Tuesday, as it continues to cast about for revenue-generating applications to supplement its cash cows, voice and text messaging.
Through a partnership with San Diego, California¨Cbased startup Intercasting, Sprint Nextel will enable its mobile subscribers to access social-networking sites such as Xanga, Rabble, Vox, and LiveJournal. Meanwhile, a deal with Mountain View, California, startup Loopt will let users of special Sprint Nextel phones locate one another via a GPS (Global Positioning System)-based service. Both offerings will be available to subscribers for $2.99 per month.
The services, however, face potential problems.
Social-networking sites are rich in bandwidth-consuming graphics, music, and pictures, all of which can present performance challenges in the bandwidth-constrained world of wireless communications. Intercasting, however, said it shrinks the bandwidth needed to display social networking sites on a cell phone to about 25 percent of the bandwidth used on a PC.
Loopt¡¯s mapping service can automatically update the location of everyone in a user's private network of friends and display that information directly on a map on the phone. The service also sends alerts when friends are near, giving them the option of meeting up or of sending relevant information such as which store in the mall is having a sale. But Jupiter analyst Neil Stroher is skeptical.
¡°The Loopt application is interesting, but it has been tried by both AT&T and Verizon and it hasn¡¯t really caught on,¡± said Mr. Strother. ¡°People are more interested in in-vehicle location information such as turn-by-turn driving instructions than they are in any other location-based service.¡±
Verizon Wireless markets an application called Chaperone that lets parents keep track of their children¡¯s whereabouts, but the carrier doesn¡¯t divulge subscriber numbers for it. Helio, a youth-oriented mobile service, also offers a location-based feature targeted at friends, as well as mobile access to MySpace.