Thursday February 15, 2007

NAVTEQ announced the European winners of the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge at the 3GSM World Congress on tuesday, Feb 13. The challenge is designed to stimulate the Location Based Services industry (LBS) by encouraging application developers from around the world to build innovative location-based service applications that work with portable devices using wireless technology and NAVTEQ maps.

Over 340 companies registered for the Challenge globally, of which nine semifinalists advanced to the final judging in Barcelona, Spain. The semifinalists represented a broad spectrum of wireless applications in three categories: Navigation, Business Applications, and Social Networking. Semifinalists were selected based on each competitor's commercial feasibility, functionality and design.

The grand-prize winner and Navigation Category Winner, Jentro Technologies GmbH - at the picture you can see my friend Erno Hempel, CTO of Jentro, received euro 35,000 in cash and euro 100,000 worth of NAVTEQ Map licenses for up to one year. Jentro's application, activepilot, is a location-based, end-to-end service offering local search, community tools, e911, and off-board navigation. This versatile product meets the needs of the mass market, and also acts as a sensor for generating traffic flow information through its users via its exclusive Floating Car Data technology.

Each category winner, excluding the Grand Prize Winner, will receive euro 5,000 in cash and euro 75,000 worth of NAVTEQ Map licenses for up to one year. Nice prize! Congratulations to all but especially to Jentro who got 2 prizes in one contest.

It's great to see that Jentro is so successful with their Java powered mobile phone offboard Navigation service - they just signed a contract with Motorola around their solution ActivePilot and are working since years with Falk, Mobilkom and many others. Jentro is working since years together with Sun - I will never forget my first project with them about a converged services showcase in 2000 called Daypath (that's why I joined Sun) and a crazy one in 2003 around a jet-engine powered kickboard (codename KickJet).