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Industry Leaders Gather to Make Location Fundamental to Everything Mobile
SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 28 -- Building on the success of last year's inaugural event, SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIRF) , a leading provider of GPS-powered location platforms, today announced the second annual Location 2.0 Summit as well as the ten finalists chosen to give Fast-Pitch presentations at the event. More than 200 of the top global location industry executives are expected to gather at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco on September 10, 2008 for this invitation-only event, which this year also introduces the People's Choice Awards to highlight innovation in the LBS industry.
This year's event will feature keynote addresses from Christof Hellmis, director of Navigation and Routing Solutions at Nokia and Dr. Vincent Tao, senior director of the Microsoft Local, Mobile Search and Virtual Earth business unit at Microsoft. Other featured speakers include Joe Astroth, vice president of Location Services; Randy Frantz, director of Telecommunications and LBS at ESRI; Steve Glagow, vice president of Market Operations at Orange-France Telecom; Niren Hiro, vice president of business for Admob; Masaaki Maeda, senior vice president of the Service and Technology Division at NTT DoCoMo; Rich Miner, vice president of Mobile Technology for Google; Magnus Nilsson, CEO of Wayfinder Systems; Jerry Panagrossi, vice president and general manager of North America for Symbian, Inc.; Ed Schmit, associate director of the Enterprise Developer Program at AT&T; Brad Smith, technology editor at Wireless Week and Eric White, general manager of Handheld Solutions at Trimble Mobile Solutions.
"The Location 2.0 Summit has quickly become a popular event for global industry leaders, and based on the success of last year's event, we anticipate another standing-room-only crowd again this year," said Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing for SiRF. "In keeping with spirit of this event, attendees will be able to use their wireless handsets to vote for their favorite Fast-Pitch presentations, and the winner in each Fast-Pitch category will receive a People's Choice Award during the evening award ceremony."
The Location 2.0 Summit attracts attendees from across the entire location industry ecosystem -- operators and service providers, device manufacturers and enabling platform providers as well as content and application developers -- to explore the future direction of technologies for making location fundamental to everything mobile. Attendees will hear and discuss success stories and proven strategies as well as critical challenges for the location industry in the mobile and wireless space.
Fast-Pitch Finalists
This year's event introduces unique three-minute Fast-Pitch presentations -- high-intensity sessions that demonstrate the benefits of using the power of location to enhance the daily lives of individuals, enterprises and communities. Developers will pitch their innovative LBS applications to the top global location industry executives in attendance at the conclusion of each of the panel discussions.
The Fast-Pitch nominees that were submitted were judged by Kanwar Chadha and wireless industry analyst, Andrew Seybold; finalists have been chosen for each of the three panel discussion sessions.
For the consumer Fast-Pitch category, the finalists are Dial Directions for its product DIR-ECT-IONS; Locr for its product locr.com; and Loopt for its product Loopt.
For the enterprise Fast-Pitch category, the finalists are LuckyCal, Inc. for its product LuckyCal with Predictive Presence Technology, Pacific DataVision for its product Locator for SkyMailTM, and Proxpro, Inc. for its product Prompt.
For the next generation technologies Fast-Pitch category, the finalists are Knowtate for its Knowtations product, Microsoft Corporation for the product Location Prediction for Drivers, Planet 9 Studios and its product RayGun and Sense Networks for its CitySense product.
Panel Discussions
The Fast-Pitch presentations will be an integral part of the three panel discussions:
-- Consumer Panel: Location and the Wireless Ecosystem
-- Enterprise Panel: Using Location to Beat the Economy
-- Future Technologies: One World, One Network for LBS?
Unlike typical conference-style panel discussions, these interactive sessions will delve deeply into the topics being covered and allow attendees to take part. Held in question-and-answer format to promote audience participation, the panels will conclude with unique three-minute presentations from the finalists of the Fast-Pitch competition, which will feature the most innovative new LBS application and technologies in beta or on the market today. Participants will be able to utilize SMS-based voting to select their favorites from each group of Fast Pitches, and the winner of each Fast-Pitch category will receive People's Choice Awards.
Awards
The afternoon will conclude with closing remarks and the Location 2.0 Summit Awards, an extraordinary opportunity to promote excellence and celebrate achievement in the industry. In addition to the Leadership Award and Pioneer Award presented to honor and recognize outstanding members of the location ecosystem, this year's event also features the new People's Choice Awards presented to the most popular Fast-Pitch presentations. The cocktail reception accompanying the Awards will provide an opportunity for attendees to make new acquaintances, interact with other executives and leaders within the location industry and build strategic partnerships.
Agenda
The Summit will commence at 11:00 a.m. with a luncheon in the St. Regis Ballroom hosted by Andrew Seybold, a renowned expert on the convergence of wireless, mobility and the Internet. During his noontime opening remarks, Mr. Seybold will be sharing his insights on the most effective location-based services strategies that he has championed from the very early days of the industry.
After the luncheon, opening remarks and the opening keynote address, the Location 2.0 Summit will continue with consumer and enterprise keynote addresses and the three panel discussions and Fast-Pitch presentation sessions. The Summit will conclude with closing remarks, the Awards program and the cocktail reception.
More information on the Location 2.0 Summit and Awards can be found at http://www.sirf.com/location2summit.
About SiRF Technology
SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. develops and markets location platforms based on semiconductor and software products that are designed to enable location-awareness utilizing GPS and other location technologies, enhanced by wireless connectivity and multimedia capabilities for high-volume mobile consumer devices and commercial applications. SiRF's technology has been integrated into a wide range of mobile consumer devices such as automobile navigation systems, portable navigation devices (PNDs), mobile phones, mobile computers, GPS-based peripherals and handheld GPS devices, and into commercial applications such as location servers, asset tracking devices and fleet management systems. SiRF markets and sells its products in four target platforms: wireless handheld devices such as mobile phones; automotive electronics systems, including navigation and telematics systems; consumer electronics products such as recreational GPS handhelds, mobile gaming machines, digital cameras and wearable devices; and mobile computing systems, including personal digital assistants, notebook computers, universal mobile personal computers (UMPCs) and mobile internet devices. Founded in 1995, SiRF is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has sales offices, design centers and research facilities around the world. The company trades on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under the symbol SIRF. Additional information about SiRF and its location technology solutions can be found at http://www.sirf.com/.
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