The global location intelligence market size was valued at USD 8.12 billion in 2016. It is predicted to expand at a CAGR of 15.3% from 2018 to 2025. Rapid pace of digitization has been a critical driving force for the market growth. Furthermore, increasing investments in Internet of Things (IoT) and penetration of smart devices and network services are expected to further boost the expansion.

Smartphones allow businesses to access dynamic site data, such as whereabouts, location preferences, duration of stay, and frequency of visits of consumers. This dynamic data enables organization to predict customer behavior and their buying patterns. It can help in better decision-making.

The last decade has witnessed growing use of mobile devices for commercial transactions. Adoption of new technologies and increasing investments in infrastructure have resulted in development of numerous Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) applications. Widespread use of various mobile applications and enhanced location sharing capabilities of mobile devices have revolutionized the way services are being delivered to end users.

Companies such as Google Inc.; ESRI; Qualcomm Inc.; AT&T; Intel Corporation; and Apple Inc. are making significant investments in this industry. Solution providers are integrating real-time place monitoring capabilities in devices such as smartphones, vehicles, and aircrafts among others.

Moreover, these tools enable businesses to identify consumer trends and behavior and to collect a large database of niche markets. This helps businesses to deliver better products and services and mitigate uncertainties in the market. Thus, need to optimize business operations and cost efficiency has increased the demand for location intelligence tools across industries. This factor is anticipated to accelerate market growth in near future.

However, lack of network infrastructure, concerns regarding data privacy, lack of awareness about geospatial and predictive analytics, and other operational challenges and risks can hinder market growth. Furthermore, several connected devices gather personal information and track live positions of users. This data can be misused by hackers and various agencies for fraudulent and criminal activities. This factor is anticipated to adversely affect the market growth.

Location intelligence tools find applications in management of workforce, asset, facility, risk, and consumer. It is also used for remote monitoring, and sales and marketing optimization among others. Sales and marketing optimization accounted for over 20% of the overall market in 2017, acquiring a major revenue share.

Companies can utilize customer position data and other information obtained from different sensors and smart devices to infer buying patterns and trends. They can use this data to plan future marketing campaigns and to improve product placement, thereby building a customer-centric business for enhanced customer experience. Thus, these tools enable visualization and analysis of spatial data for improved customer experience, reduced costs, and enhanced overall productivity.

Utility and energy, retail, transportation, telecom, and manufacturing, among other industries are integrating these tools with their assets, business processes, and products, such as fleet, manufacturing facilities, and utility lines. Aggregated system with these tools can deliver overarching functionality, thus helping organizations to increase productivity and profitability.

On the basis of service, the market has been segmented into consulting, system integration, and others. System integration segment accounted for over 44% market share in 2017, thus acquiring a majority revenue share. Many industries use system integrators to integrate location intelligence tools with their assets, business processes, and products to collect meaningful insights.

System integration segment is projected to witness highest demand over the forecast period, owing to increasing need to integrate new data sources with growing adoption of IoT and ever-increasing location-based data. Furthermore, location intelligence helps consulting firms to gather, analyze, and examine relevant information and offer a more accurate opinion to other organizations.

Location intelligence solutions are gaining popularity and are being adopted across industries, owing to potential applications and operational benefits. Transportation and logistics accounted for over 19% revenue share in 2017. Need for effective and productive management of logistics and transportation is rising with rapid growth of vehicles, population, and urbanization coupled with lack of land resources. Transportation and logistics professionals across the world have understood and implemented these tools to address their business challenges effectively.

Other verticals are also incorporating location intelligence technologies to offer differentiated products and to optimize business processes. These tools help organizations to identify trends, customer preferences, and buying patterns of consumers to deliver customized solutions in a shorter period of time.BFSI organizations can learn about economic conditions, risks, and customer interaction using spatial models based on geodemographic. It improves performance and profitability by sharing analyzed data and pattern correlations between data sets and forecast actual trends.

North America accounted for the largest market share in 2017, owing to the presence of key organizations, such as Google LLC; Apple Inc.; Qualcomm Inc.; TIBCO Software Inc.; ESRI; and HERE. The region is characterized by robust IT infrastructure, better connectivity, and rapid adoption of new technologies. Penetration of smartphones in North America was around 64% in 2017 and is estimated to grow steadily. Thus, the regional market is anticipated to grow at a steady pace.

Asia Pacific is expected to emerge as the fastest-growing region over the forecast period, owing to growing number of smartphone and social media users, service providers and enhancement of networking technologies. Various organizations and service providers are trying to introduce new services and products to acquire a larger market share.

The market is very competitive owing to the presence of prominent players such as Pitney Bowes Inc.; Apple Inc.; Qualcomm Technologies; Wireless Logic; HERE Technologies; Bosch Software Innovations GmbH; and Trimble Inc., among others. Companies are focusing on mergers and acquisitions with smaller and newer technology firms to gain a more significant market share by augmenting their service and product portfolios. For instance, IBM's collaboration with Mapbox enabled users of Watson platform to gather geodata and track location data.

In another recent development, Intel's acquisition of Basis and Google's acquisition of Nest have enabled the former to enter IoT and location intelligence market with ease. Companies are heavily investing in R&D and are collaborating with research institutes to develop new innovative products, such as SAP Geographical Framework, which enables integration of location data using GIS technologies.

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