My feeling is the big need is to apply more than one Metadata Template during import since it would allow us to apply a standard copyright template plus templates that might be specific to the subject. In this case I agree it would be silly to have a template that only had GPS co-ordinates, but it would also apply the IPTC location fields and keywords.
The Saved Location is a slightly odd beast - as much about detecting images in an area as it is about applying location data. If it could be loaded with other metadata like IPTC locations and keywords, it would become something more like a Metadata Template. That would make your idea close to applying multiple templates, though it wouldn't help those not interested in geographical data but who might value more than one template (eg copyright template plus a model info template). So I think multiple templates is a more generic solution.
In my view Adobe also has to be careful not to replicate too many Library activities in the Import dialog box. The import step is really about physical movement of the pictures off the flash card and putting them onto proper storage media, with backup copies, so you can safely reformat the card. So it makes sense to take advantage of this bottleneck, making you do important tasks like applying copyright info or other global metadata. But performing Library activities in the Import dialog becomes less viable when you have multiple card imports or images - and the more images you import the more likely they'll have multiple locations and different combinations of keywords. There is some demand to select groups of pictures in Import and apply different keywords or other metadata to each group - but you're soon duplicating a whole range of existing Library features and I'd argue we're already too far down that track.
John