WindSpring Receives Patent: Groundbreaking Technology for Connected Navigation
Written by WindSpring
Tuesday, 08 July 2008
Ability to transmit multiple compressed navigation data types in a
single stream combined with WindSpring's Edit-in-Place capabilities
enable 'last mile' navigation device incremental updates
SAN JOSE, Calif., July 8, 2008 - WindSpring, Inc., a pioneer of advanced editable-compression software for the navigation and location-based services (LBS) markets, announced today that it has received U.S. Patent Number 7,358,874 for technology enabling the compression of multiple navigation data types (including map data, POI and LBS data, historical traffic data and more) into a single compressed data stream for transmission to a navigation device. The patent also covers the management of that data stream on the device. These capabilities, combined with WindSpring's unique edit-in-place technology, enable the incremental navigation update solutions critical to the future of connected navigation.
Gartner expects personal navigation device offerings to grow from 34 million units in 2007 to 112 million in 2012, but the rollout of connected navigation services has been severely hampered by difficulties in updating data on the end-user devices. Connected navigation requires the delivery of up-to-date, location-aware content to give users the newest maps directions, routes, traffic updates, weather, points of interest and other current location-based services. Consumer demand for connected navigation services is very high, and a recent Gartner study reported that U.S. consumers are most interested in wireless map updates - one of the services hindered by the lack of incremental update capability.
"Connected navigation solutions provide the opportunity to drive product differentiation and market demand," said Thilo Koslowski, Vice President and Automotive Practice Leader at Gartner. "A critical success factor for connected navigation offerings is the ability to update and refresh relevant content continuously. This will maximize customer satisfaction and enable recurring revenue models."
"As navigation becomes connected and more navigation services leverage that connectedness, the need for updates to the data those services use and provide will be absolutely inescapable," said Tom Hunt, president and CEO of WindSpring. "WindSpring technologies pave the way for truly connected navigation. We not only get compressed streams of multiple data types to the device, but we edit and apply those updates without having to replace large blocks of data."
The navigation industry has been stymied for more than a decade by a lack of easy updates to on-device data. In the past, even a small change to a map file would require replacing an entire block of map data, or the entire map database. The increased demands of connected navigation greatly increase this burden, overflowing both the memory and processing capacity of current devices.
These newly-patented capabilities announced today combined with WindSpring's unique edit-in-place technology enable the development of 'last mile' navigation update solutions. This also allows devices to receive and update data from navigation map, content and service providers without replacing large blocks of data. WindSpring's advanced editable-compression technology makes this possible, and provides greatly increased device performance and speed, storage capacity and data management efficiency.
The company's patented technologies represent the first and only path to a solution for this industry-wide problem. WindSpring's technologies:
- Optimize device storage capacity.
- Improve on-device data management and speed.
- Manage multiple compressed data types in a single data stream.
- Enable the rollout of true, automated incremental updates on consumer navigation devices by allowing changes to be applied directly to any navigation content or database without file replacement or fragmentation.
About WindSpring
WindSpring, Inc. has pioneered advanced editable-compression software for the navigation and location-based services (LBS) markets. WindSpring software enables editing of the compressed data, eliminates the need for file decompression, drastically reduces the footprints of large files and opens the door to true 'connected navigation' by enabling on-device databases to be updated and edited over any wireless network, and in any format. WindSpring technology fulfills the promise of incremental update systems by allowing changes to be applied to any navigation content or database without file fragmentation or the use of side files, and without additional on-device memory. Learn more at www.WindSpring.com.
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