WhereCamp 2008 @ GooglePlex
Navx will be at WhereCamp 2008 at Mountain View, CA 17th & 18th May 2008.
Want to meet there during the weekend to share a geoweb & gps experience : Email us or request a meeting using the WhereCamp site.
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Navx will speak during Where 2.0 Google Panel
On Monday 05/12/2008 8am30, at Burlingame CA , Navx will be part of the WHERE 2.0 Google Panel session talking about usage and experience.
The subject will be : Creating Great Geocontent and Sharing It with Google Maps and Earth.
Want to meet there during all the Where 2.0 conference : Email us here !
Navx Beta new release launched today !
After the success of the public lunch of Navx Beta platform, a new high-powered and functional version is available today, ready to host a lot more travellers content.
The new things you may not miss are :
Flickr pictures located on map, so you will be able to visualize the pictures from your journey exacly in the right place they were took and what’s more, create points of interest in the pictures places.
The mass content management, so you will be able to oversee and manage your GPS content easily by selecting lots of POI’s, dragging and dropping them, adding all to a set, export them into your GPS or visualize them in Google Earth.
Social Contributions, so
everyone will be able to share, through a public set, special POI, linked to
the same context
Browse across your Friends Content
Alerts through GeoRSS feeds, so it is really easy now to keep alert with those contents that are special for each user. This feed is available for each user, set, and contribution.
We hope this version fillfull
all your expectations. And that’s not all, we continue to prepare more and more
good surprises for next month. So keep in touch and visite the site !!!
NAVX named as one of Europe's most promising technology companies
NAVX has been named as one of the most promising private technology companies in the 2008 Red Herring 100 Europe.
Every year the editorial team of Red Herring analyses hundreds of cutting edge companies across Europe and selects the 100 that are best positioned to grow at an explosive rate. The winners have been announced at the Red Herring Europe event taking place this week on Malta: NAVX is proud to be part of the best 100 private companies !
Need more info about NAVX ? Please contact us ! We will be happy to help you.
info :
Established in 2005, Paris-based NAVX is a leading provider of services and content for GPS devices, such as personal navigation systems. Its subscription-based, real-time services deliver rich information for its customers such as gas prices, the locations of speed cameras, restaurant guides and tourist information. NAVX also recently announced a platform which allows travellers to prepare, record and share details of trips and holidays, positioning places and notes of interest onto online map, available at http://beta.navx.com.
NAVX services are compatible with all major GPS brands, including Garmin, Magellan, Medion, Mio, Navigon, Navman and TomTom. The services are available in eight countries and are translated into six languages. NAVX will continue to expand its international offering throughout 2008.
TomTom announces a weak Q1
TomTom announced yesterday lower than expected revenues in the first quarter, with an operating margin ranging between 0% and 10% (instead of the usual 20%).
This is not surprising given the impact of the price war we have been seeing in the recent months. The prices and margins of entry level PNDs are plumeting, while still making for the biggest part of the market.
What does it mean ? To our opinion, it indicates even more than PND manufacturer need to :
1) beef up their PNDs with additional services that can be sold to end-users, and generate revenues through subscriptions (e.g. traffic, weather, speedcam, gas prices, parking availability, etc)
2) convince PND owners to buy higher-end models to benefit from these services
Traffic information is clearly one example of a service that people will pay for, and it is no surprise TomTom has been closing a number of agreements with Vodafone in this respect. But as more connected PNDs hit the market this year and in 2009, we expect PND manufacturers to be very creative and launch a number of value-added services that will make a difference. And NAVX will actively contribute to this business :-)
Is the iPhone revolutionizing LBS ?
The Apple iPhone has shipped more than five millions units worldwide since its lunch in 2007. We believe that the iPhone will bring consumer awareness to LBS- type applications and markets for the following reasons :
- The iPhone has a great screen for LBS applications, which is clearer than any PNDs and user-friendly for the LBS of pedestrian navigation
- The iPhone uses a combination of Skyhook Wireless' technology to do a initial Wi-Fi position (WPS) fix. If no Wi-FI access points are detected then it relies on Google's my location feature which is based on cell tower location information. It means that the absence of organic GPS is not a big deal if you want to search the nearest pizza on the iPhone.
- The Google-Maps application on iPhone is user-friendly and ergonomic: easy to find restaurants, gas stations, get driving directions with the local search.. And it also enables poi creation and turn by turn navigation.
- The iPhone operates on the EDGE data network which provides up to three times the data capacity of GPRS, so advanced mobile services works well on the iPhone and the network is fast enough to zoom in an out on LBS application.
- With the iPhone software development kit, which allows third-party programmers to create applications for the iPhone, many application will benefit from iPhone fonctionnalities (touch screen, google maps, location, big memory, adress book, connectivity, calendar ...)
- Accurate digital maps and related content are the foundation of powerful location-based services and applications and with all the social platforms launching their web application for iPhone, users can have more personalized experience from their devices.
Navteq Global LBS Challenge Awards
NAVTEQ announced yesterday at the CTIA WIRELESS 2008 the Grand Prize Winner of this year's NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge, America: Ten 23
Ten 23's solution, SpotJots, is a location-based social blogging application that allows users to a upload their stories, reviews, pictures, video, audio and documents to their personal blog.
Three runners-up were also announced:
#1 Mediated Spaces's solution called The Wildlab enables citizen scientists such as birdwatchers to collect real-time information such as location, time and the species sighted on their mobile devices.
#2 HeyWhatsThat provides detailed information about the mountains and peaks around the user such as mountain names, elevations, contours and viewsheds -- all through the user's mobile device.
#3 America's Emergency Network's solution, AEN Mobile, alerts users about natural or manmade disasters within range of their devices by tapping into the AEN Central Database of emergency bulletins.
ps. The Global LBS Challenge is an important event in the location-based services industry because it challenges developers to build innovative location-enabled applications that work with mobile phones and/or wireless handheld devices using dynamic positioning technology. Participants compete for a global prize pool of cash, licenses and services from NAVTEQ and sponsors of the event, with this year's prize pool the largest to date, valued at over $4.5 million (US).
Navx : Finalist of Red Herinng Europe Award !
Red Herring Magazine has announced its selection of the 200 European finalists, forerunners for the prestigious Red Herring 100 Europe 2008 award ! And we are proud to announce that Navx is one of the finalists ! We now hope to be selected in the 100 winners !
The award, given each year to the best private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) will be announced in Malta on April 14-16, where CEOs and founders from the Red Herring 100 will present their winning technologies to an audience of leading entrepreneurs.
Want to meet Navx, there ? Send us an e-mail !
Boom predicted for portable navigation on mobiles
According to Telematics Research Group (TRG), sales of portable navigation devices are set to increase ten-fold over the next eight years, with the huge take-up coming from the the GPS functionality being embedded into mobile phones.
While Garmin and TomTom are predicted to remain global market leaders for PNDs, mobile phone makers such as Nokia, Motorola, LG and Samsung are expected to show the way in the near future...
Want some numbers ?
TRG sees the worldwide portable navigation market growing from 50 million units in 2007 to more than 500 million units in 2015.
30 million dedicated PNDs were sold last year and about 20 million navigation-enabled mobile phones.According the TRG, navigation-enabled mobile phones will start outselling dedicated PNDs next year, with the combined segments reaching annual sales of more than 220 million by the end of 2012.
This change in market leadership is partly due to wireless connectivity opening up new applications and services by bringing together accurate location-based data with advanced POI data including pricing, inventory and user-generated content such as ratings of local businesses.
The market researchers suggest that by 2015, Nokia could be selling 180 million devices with GPS capability, followed by Samsung and Motorola (both 70 million), LG (60 million), and TomTom and Garmin both 25 million.
So we see that TomTom and Garmin are adding connectivity to their devices, and mobile phone makers are adding maps. Apparently PNDs makers have to find new ways to compete for smartphone users.
ps. Recent efforts to accelarate location based technologies :
During the Mobile World Congress 2008-Barcelona, Nokia has introduced the N78 including geotagging software and assisted GPS, also the upload/sharing site Ovi acquired with Twango and their own A-GPS backbone implementation. The strategy of Nokia is to provide its own infrastructure for location data so that applications running on Nokia phones can obtain accurate location data anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile, Motorola also keeps moving. The company has joined a technical forum (CSR-Cambridge, England) that has been established to encourage equipment makers and operators to work together to accelerate development of location technologies. The idea is to test the E-GPS, a system providing real-time GPS navigation embedded in a mobile handset that is said to improve the responsiveness and availability of accurate position information compared with assisted GPS (A-GPS) in a live cellular network. More info, here.
