who you will call next, based on your location, date, and time of day. They want your phone to know you’re on your way to a 3 p.m. meeting—so by 2 pm it can find out itself who else is attending and has downloaded their bios for you.
To help make all this mobile mapping technology feasible, Nokia bought Navteq, a Chicago-based digital mapping developer, for $8.1 billion in 2007.
Nokia discusses location a lot. In their Research Center’s memo “Location, Context, and Mobile Services,” it says: “One of the pieces of information that has the most potential is location. That’s because, once this is known, there are so many other pieces of data that can be inferred contextually.” Such as local weather, traffic conditions, the price of fuel, and the nearest police station, cafe, park or hospital. With local positioning technology, a mobile phone could be used to locate eyeglasses, keys, and other easily misplaced objects equipped with RFID tags.
Nokia plans to make phones that will know what you’re doing now and what you’re going to do next, and to help you do it. “Think of your mobile phone as your digital companion, constantly watching over the world around you, looking for ways to help,” the memo says.
The technology is so promising that