Patent ID: 7356344

Claim:
An apparatus which acquires position information about a user of plural types of information terminals, comprising: a service-asynchronous position information acquisition unit receiving data including position information from service-asynchronous information terminals that announce position information independent of requesting a service and that support plural types of different communications protocol and/or data format; and a service-synchronous position information acquisition unit receiving data including position information from service-synchronous information terminals that announce position information when requesting a service and that support plural types of different communications protocol and/or data format; wherein said service-asynchronous position information acquisition unit comprises a conversion unit converting the received data to the same format as data received by the service-synchronous position information acquisition unit; said service-synchronous position information acquisition unit further receives data converted by said conversion unit of said service-asynchronous position information acquisition unit; said service-asynchronous information terminals and said service-synchronous information terminals receiving services from across multiple service providers; and said service-synchronous position information acquisition unit comprises: a terminal determination unit determining a type of the information terminal depending on data transmitted from the information terminal of the user according to which a communications protocol and/or data format is employed for the data transmitted from the information terminal, and a position information extraction unit extracting position information about the user from the data transmitted from the information terminal in response to the determination result, where a service of the service providers is provided to the plural types of information terminals based on the acquired position information received by the service-synchronous position information acquisition unit.