Business potential and market opportunities of intelligent LBSs for personal mobility – A European case study.

Abstract: The article presents a first hypothesis of a business model for an intelligent LBS for personal mobility. This business model has been developed inside FP7 i-Tour project. i-Tour stands for “intelligent Transport system for Optimized URban trips” and it is a so-called Collaborative Focused Research Project presented to the call on Surface Sustainable Transport topic “SST.2008.3.1.2 Intelligent mobility systems and multi-modal interfaces for transport of passengers”. In order to develop a business model for next generation personal mobility systems, an as-is analysis has been performed, resulting in a scenario characterized by the wide diffusion of wireless connections at urban and regional scale (e.g. UMTS, Wi-Fi or WiMax); by info-mobility services promoting multi-modal transport; by the development of transportation services based on localization technologies. The business model has been, then, proposed taking into account two different business strategies and two different organizations, and developing a financial analysis, including a break-even analysis useful to support a first feasibility study for a distinctive go-to-market strategy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]