GyPSii platform wins NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge award and announces major new partnerships worldwid
Written by LBSzone
Monday, 10 March 2008
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands-- GyPSii, the worlds leading geo-location
and social networking service provider for mobile phones and Internet
devices, received highly sought after industry acclaim at this years
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, when it was a winner in the NAVTEQ
LBS Challenge, a contest in which over 300 companies competed.
The award coincided with GyPSiis live launch at the event, following a three month public beta trial with users worldwide. The honour further positions GyPSii as the leading player in the emerging mobile social networking and LBS market.
The worldwide contest, which has established a reputation as the premier event in the location-based services (LBS) industry, challenges application developers to build innovative location-based services which work with mobile phones and/or wireless handheld devices using dynamic positioning technology and NAVTEQ maps.
Over 316 companies registered for this year's Challenge globally, of which twelve advanced to the final judging in the European division. The finalists represented a broad spectrum of wireless applications and were selected based on commercial feasibility, functionality, ease of use and design. The final judging panel, which included executives from Autodesk, Deutsche Telekom, GPS and Co, Innovacom, Nokia, O2, Telecom Italia, Truffle Ventures, Vodafone, and WebMobility, based their decisions on the same key criteria.
Nokia has globally sponsored the Challenge for the third consecutive year and together with Autodesk in 2008.
This has been a very exciting time for GyPSii, said Dan Harple, CEO of GyPSii. In September 2007 we signaled our intent to become the leading global platform for the convergence of search, location and personal content as a new form of geo-social networking. Winning a NAVTEQ LBS Challenge award is satisfying because of the intense competition, coupled with the expertise of the panel of industry-leading judges. It means a lot to our whole team.
He continued; We are now recognised as the preeminent industry player with a rapidly growing global GyPSii community. We have visitors from more than 55 countries and we continue to lay down our global footprint across multiple handsets, geographies and affinity communities with major strategic partnerships worldwide. People can expect to hear more significant news from GyPSii in the coming months.
GyPSii generated considerable industry buzz at the Mobile World Congress. CNNs on-the-ground reporter, Adrian Finighan interviewed Mr Harple and posted on his CNN blog that GyPSii is: a mobile social networking platform which, Im willing to bet, will soon be as big a phenomenon as Facebook. Bigger, perhaps.
(http://edition.cnn.com/exchange/blogs/in.the.field/2008/02/gadget -addicts-playground.html) (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)
In February, GyPSii made a series of major announcements, significantly increasing its global presence. In China, GyPSii announced partnerships with China Unicom, one of the two mobile operators in China with more than 150 million subscribers and Shanghai Rannuo to launch its GyPSii service for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Additional to this was the news of GyPSiis partnership with Chinese device manufacturer Dopod to provide a range of location-based information and services to members of its Dopod Club community.
GyPSii also moved into India, the worlds second largest and fastest growing mobile market, and announced an agreement with Broadway Pvt. Ltd. (www.broadwayindia.in/), to offer the full suite of GyPSii services to Indias 233 million mobile subscribers.
The GyPSii application is already fully compatible with Windows Mobile phones, the Blackberry range from RIM and Nokias flagship consumer smartphones. GyPSii recently announced web support for Apples iPhone and continues to add new devices on a regular basis.
As well as extending its product range, GyPSii has also reached beyond English speaking markets and is available in ten languages including Korean, Russian and two forms of Chinese.
To sign up to GyPSii users can visit the companys website (www.gypsii.com) or from a phone browser at http://gypsii.com/m.
About GyPSii
GyPSii is the market-leading mobile lifestyle application, connecting people, places and communities across networks and devices. GyPSii provides a geo-location social networking platform and services for mobile, web & set-top box devices, and is headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. (www.gypsii.com).
First launched in North America in October 2003, the Global LBS Challenge is focused on driving the development and visibility of innovative navigation solutions for wireless devices. From wireless business applications to sports, travel and security, integrating the accuracy and richness of NAVTEQ digital map data facilitates the timely evolution of the next wave LBS using global positioning satellite (GPS) technology. Industry validation of the Global LBS Challenge for the category overall encouraged NAVTEQ to host the judging and presentations for the first time in Europe, North America and Asia this year.
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