Pedestrian Navigation Continues March Towards Mainstream Adoption

Posted: Monday, June 29, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Miscellaneous

NAVTEQ Discover Cities™ Data Powers Leading Applications and Devices

NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of digital map, traffic and location data, today confirmed its industry-leading pedestrian navigation product, NAVTEQ Discover Cities, now powers several on-foot commercially available devices and applications throughout the world.

Offering up to 53 pedestrian-specific attributes, NAVTEQ Discover Cities enables an advanced pedestrian navigation experience while leading the industry in quality and coverage. NAVTEQ Discover Cities has extensive data that helps navigation devices and applications provide a variety of routing options to users – including those entirely on foot, or with portions on public transit systems. For instance, when a pedestrian consumer wants the option to use public transit, NAVTEQ Discover Cities enables routes that take into consideration the location of bus and rail stations/ stops and their entrances/exits in relation to the pedestrian route as well as the train/bus network information, including transfer locations.

Some of the world’s best-known companies have deployed applications or devices utilizing NAVTEQ Discover Cities data for pedestrian navigation, including Garmin, Networks In Motion, Nokia and Samsung. This growing trend confirms NAVTEQ’s own research: Consumers ranked the use of a device for ‘on-foot’ navigation as one of the most important reasons for considering the purchase of a mobile phone1. Commercially available devices and applications using NAVTEQ Discover Cities data include:

Garmin’s CityXplorer™ Maps
Garmin’s CityXplorer™ maps are available for select tourist destinations in both North America and Europe and can easily be downloaded to the company’s nüvi line of portable navigation devices. With CityXplorer, users can make the most of their journey by planning and using routes that include public transit options such as bus and metro rail stations.

Networks In Motion (NIM) Gokivo™ Navigator
Gokivo provides customers with NIM’s renowned on-phone navigation and local search platform, turning BlackBerry® smartphones into indispensable mobile tools, with an array of connectivity options at their fingertips.

Gokivo is already available from BlackBerry App World, and incorporates NAVTEQ® maps and NAVTEQ Discover Cities content in North America and Europe, delivering an enhanced pedestrian navigation experience.

Ovi Maps by Nokia
Nokia, the first to integrate NAVTEQ Discover Cities mapping and pedestrian navigation attributes, has continued to expand its offering with over 80 cities including shortcuts through squares, parks and buildings, 3D landmarks, building footprints and public transport entrance points in their upcoming version of Ovi Maps. These combined with compass and real-time pedestrian navigation “Walk” redefine pedestrian orientation and navigation in urban environments.

The upcoming version of Ovi Maps for mobile will soon start shipping on millions of Nokia devices and will be available for upgrade to existing compatible Nokia devices at www.nokia.com/maps. The NAVTEQ Discover Cities components are also integrated within the map data and Walk routing on Ovi Maps for web at www.maps.ovi.com.

Samsung I8910 (OmniaHD)
Samsung launched the I8910 HD with NAVTEQ maps and content in Europe in May. With the help of content from NAVTEQ Discover Cities, the GPS-enabled Samsung I8910 HD will allow urban travelers to take full advantage of their surroundings and help them get from place to place with a variety of routing options.

Since its launch, NAVTEQ Discover Cities coverage has expanded in all major regions of the world. Each city added to the product has data that is collected and verified with NAVTEQ’s “feet-on-the-street” expertise, offering customers up to 53 pedestrian-specific map attributes, such as paved pathways, walkways through parks and plazas, bridges, tunnels, sidewalks and crosswalks.

NAVTEQ Discover Cities also serves as an ideal platform for additional content from NAVTEQ, such as visual content or travel/leisure guides. When combined, consumers can experience much richer travel experiences. For example, 3D landmarks provides visual confirmation that a person is walking in the right direction, while an in-depth restaurant review from a travel guide can provide valuable insight for the evening’s activities.

“The growing number of commercially available devices and applications reinforces the trend that pedestrian navigation is becoming mainstream.” said Jeff Mize, executive vice president, global sales, NAVTEQ. “We are pleased that the high-quality data from NAVTEQ Discover Cities will enable our customers to provide consumers with accurate orientation and guidance to further enhance the pedestrian experience.” /PR

HTC Sense Debuts on New HTC Hero

Posted: Saturday, June 27, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: HTC

HTC Hero is the world's first Android-based phone with a customized user interface HTC Sense to be integrated across a portfolio of phones beginning with HTC Hero

HTC Corporation, a global designer of mobile phones, today debuted HTC Sense, an intuitive and seamless experience that will be introduced across a portfolio of phones beginning with the new HTC Hero. With its distinct design and powerful capabilities fully integrated with HTC Sense, Hero introduces a unique blend of form and function that takes Android to new heights.

HTC Sense is focused on putting people at the centre by making your phone work in a more simple and natural way. This experience revolves around three fundamental principles that were designed by quietly listening and observing how people live and communicate.

"HTC Hero introduces a more natural way for reaching out to the people and accessing your important information, not by following the status quo of todays phones, but by following how you communicate and live your life," said Peter Chou, Chief Executive Officer, HTC Corporation. "HTC Sense is a distinct experience created to make HTC phones more simple for people to use, leaving them saying, it just makes sense."

HTC Hero
HTC Hero continues HTCs leadership in cutting-edge design that focuses on introducing a variety of distinct devices to represent your own individuality. Boasting bevelled edges and an angled bottom, the HTC Hero is contoured to fit comfortably in your hand and against your face while youre on a call. The HTC Hero is built to last beginning with an anti-fingerprint screen coating for improved smudge resistance and a longer lasting, clearer display. The white HTC Hero includes an industry-first, Teflon coating, resulting in an improved, durable white surface that is soft to the touch.

With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including a GPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a 5 mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory.

HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero.

HTC Sense
Built on a culture of innovation and a passion to enhance peoples lives, HTC shapes the mobile experience around the individual. Debuting on the HTC Hero and available on all new HTC devices moving forward, Sense delivers on three basic principles: Make it Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected.

Make It Mine
Make It Mine, is about feeling your HTC phone was created for and by you. To do this, HTC encourages you to dictate and organize how you want to access the people and content in your life in a way that fits best for you. For some, this means adding glance view widgets that push content like twitter feeds, weather and other content to the surface while others may want quick access to business-focused information like email, calendar and world-times. HTC is also introducing a new profile feature called scenes that enables you to create different customized content profiles around specific functions or times in your life.

Stay Close
Today, staying in touch with the people in your life means managing a variety of communication channels and applications ranging from phone calls, emails, texts, photos, status updates and more. HTC Sense takes a different approach by integrating these communication channels and applications into one single view enabling you to stay closer to your important people. With HTC Sense, friends Facebook status updates and photos along with their Flickr photos are included along side their text messages, emails and call history in a single view.

Discover the Unexpected
Many of the most memorable moments in your life are experienced, not explained. HTC Sense is focused on providing a variety of these simple yet innovative experiences on your HTC phone that will sometimes bring you moments of joy and delight. It can be something as basic as turning the phone over to silence a ring or as simple as improving the smart dialler for making calls quicker. HTC Sense also includes perspectives, a new way for viewing your content such as email, photos, Twitter, music and more in different ways.

Availability
The HTC Hero will be available to people across Europe in July and in Asia later in the summer. A distinct North American version will be available later in 2009. /PR

iPhone Now 69 percent of U.S. Smartphone Traffic

Posted: Friday, June 26, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: iPhone, Smartphone

By Jason Ankeny

Apple's iPhone represented 69 percent of U.S. smartphone traffic across mobile advertising marketplace AdMob's network in May 2009, up from 59 percent the previous month. According to AdMob, smartphones now account for 37.3 percent of total U.S. traffic--Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices generated 13 percent of AdMob smartphone traffic last month, followed by devices from HTC (10 percent) and Palm (3 percent).

In all, AdMob reached 15.1 million unique users on iPhone and iPod touch devices on 2,309 applications in its network in May, with the average iPhone user in AdMob's network accessing four applications during that time. AdMob adds that five days after the launch of the iPhone OS 3.0, devices running the update represented 44 percent of iPhone ad requests, while only 1 percent of requests came from iPod touch devices running the revamped OS.

In all, AdMob's worldwide requests increased 6 percent month over month to 8.0 billion in May. 3.8 billion requests originated from the U.S., accounting for 47.6 of total global mobile ad requests--a 0.6 increase over April 2009. After the iPhone and iPod touch, the top U.S. handset in terms of percentage of requests was the Samsung R450, followed by the Motorola Razr V3 and the HTC Dream/Android G1. [FierceMobileContent]

Apple Sells Over One Million iPhone 3GS Models

Posted: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: iPhone

Apple today announced that it has sold over one million iPhone 3GS models through Sunday, June 21, the third day after its launch. In addition, six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software in the first five days since its release.

"Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "With over 50,000 applications available from Apple's revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever."

The new iPhone 3GS is the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet, packed with incredible new features including improved speed and performance-up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G-with longer battery life, a high-quality 3 megapixel autofocus camera, easy to use video recording and hands free voice control. iPhone 3GS includes the new iPhone OS 3.0, the world's most advanced mobile operating system with over 100 new features such as Cut, Copy and Paste, MMS, Spotlight Search, landscape keyboard and more.

iPhone 3GS customers get access to more than 50,000 applications from Apple's revolutionary App Store, the largest application store in the world where customers have already downloaded over one billion apps. iPhone 3GS offers twice the capacity for the same price with a 16GB model for just $199 and a new 32GB model for just $299.** And iPhone 3G is available at the breakthrough price of just $99 for the 8GB model-a huge milestone for the high end smartphone market. Insa/PR

Nortel sells off CDMA, LTE Businesses to Nokia Siemens Networks

Posted: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: CDMA, LTE, Merger and Acquisition

By Lynnette Luna

Nortel Networks may not be emerging from bankruptcy. The company announced it is selling off virtually all of its CDMA and Long Term Evolution (LTE) evolution assets through a "stalking horse" asset sale agreement with Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia is getting its hands on the valuable businesses for a steal: $650 million.

This appears to be the first of many fire sales as Nortel announced it is in discussions with external parties to sell its other businesses. Nortel said it will assess other restructuring alternatives for these businesses in the event it is unable to maximize value through sales. In addition, Nortel will apply to delist its common shares and the NNL preferred shares from trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and expects that the creditor protection proceedings will ultimately result in the cancellation of these equity interests.

NSN is getting its hands on a CDMA business that is the second largest in the world and an LTE business that has strong potential. Nortel said Verizon Wireless was happy with its gear but was concerned about Nortel's bankruptcy. NSN has no CDMA networks business.

The agreement with NSN specifies that at least 2,500 employees would have the opportunity to continue with NSN. This represents a significant portion of the employees associated with the assets being sold. [FierceWireless]