by Ben Allen

• Added March 03, 2010

While Google may get the award for the most continuous streams of location related announcements.  Apple may be shaping up to win the award for some of the most interesting and impactful ones. What Apple lacks in quantity they may make up for in quality.

First of all I think Apple should get a lot of credit for the way they’ve jump started the mass awareness of location for consumers by placing it front and center in their hot selling iPhone’s and through their early deal with Skyhook to provide a hybrid location capability via wi-fi as a standard offering, and as a result providing a much better overall user experience versus the then standard use of GPS only devices.

There are rumors flying all over the place about what Apple has in mind next with regards to their early moves in this space and how they may be looking at the location based advertising opportunity, via their $275 million acquisition of Quattro.
Well, if you need further proof that this may just be an area of focus in the future, check out a quite interesting patent from Apple, which is by no means new, it was dated almost a year ago to the day, but still pretty telling nonetheless.

The patent doesn’t target the traditional advertising industry but instead something closer to the online affiliate marketing business with its own version of the practice. The patent describes capabilities which could create a virtual, store specific, mobile web layer that brings many of the things that consumers enjoy from their online shopping experiences into the brick and mortar store.

It would allow customers the best of both the offline and online shopping experience. Providing  access to a host of online services deliverable at a specific place including the presentment of store specific specials and offers, linking individual store items to their online store counterparts for greater convenience and selection, and even “enhanced experiences” where consumer can leave and create virtual reviews for items they’re standing in front of in the physical world.

It also allows digital items to be purchased directly over the phone as a result of hearing (music) or seeing an item in store (DVD or book)  and then crediting the brick and mortar store for driving the sale much in the same way that existing online affiliate marketing programs such as LinkShare and Commission Junction work.

While the applications of this seem targeted to digital goods such as music, books and movies, it does make you wonder what affect and potential benefits the blurring of the lines between physical and virtual worlds will mean for retail stores, and their purpose and the value they can provide... all being made possible by the rapid developments in mobile location awareness happening all around us.