NAVTEQ reveals Grand Prize Winner and three Runners-Up for Global LBS Challenge – Americas region

At CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas last week, NAVTEQ held its annual Awards show for the Americas edition of the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge. T+1 Solutions from Estonia was announced as the Grand Prize winner for Americas. They won in the category of Enterprise which is one of five categories: Content, Enterprise, Entertainment & Leisure, Navigation and Social Networking.

The winning application, Taxi4me, is a mobile taxi ordering service that helps consumers anywhere in the world connect with trusted taxi companies. The desired time and destination is sent from a user’s mobile phone to a taxi brokering server. Local taxi companies then submit competitive bids and proposed routes back to the consumer.

Now in its sixth year, the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is the premier event in the location-based services (LBS) industry, inviting application developers to build innovative applications for mobile devices using dynamic positioning technology and NAVTEQ® maps. It is a world-wide competition conducted by NAVTEQ Network for Developers™ (NN4D), NAVTEQ’s global community and support program for LBS developers and business partners.

Fourteen companies advanced to the final judging in The Americas region and the finalists represented a broad spectrum of wireless applications. These were selected based on commercial feasibility, functionality, ease of use and design.

The three runners-up also selected by the judging panel were:

1st Runner-Up: DialPlus Inc from San Diego, California: DialPlus (Social Networking category) enhances the standard phone call experience by automatically and simultaneously providing dynamic, contextually relevant visual information about the called or calling party before, during and after the call is over.

2nd Runner-Up: Creativity Software Ltd from the UK: Rough Guides Mobile Travel Guide (Entertainment & Leisure category)is a location aware city guide with user-generated content and social networking features.

3rd Runner-Up: Colombia Games from Blaine, Washington: ToGetThere (Social Networking category) allows people to share car rides and create a trustful community that helps to save the earth by traveling together.

The winner is receiving in total over $557,500 in cash, tools and data licenses, and handsets from NAVTEQ and sponsors, and each runner-up is receiving over $417,500 in total prizes.

“With a record number of registrations in The Americas region, this year marked our most competitive contest yet, making the achievement of this group of award winners all the more remarkable,” commented Jeff Mize, executive vice president, Global Sales, NAVTEQ. “We congratulate the Grand Prize Winner and three runners-up on their outstanding solutions and thank our judges and sponsors for their commitment in driving excellence and innovation in the LBS space.”

The distinguished panel of judges included executives from AT&T, Best Buy Mobile, Chrysler, deCarta, Intel, IPG Emerging Media Lab, MetroPCS, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telefónica, Verizon and Yahoo!.

“deCarta is proud to sponsor the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge again this year. Over the years this event has grown to become an industry bellwether for discovering not only new applications, but the trends of the mobile services and the emerging technologies that make these applications possible. The LBS Challenge has a track record of producing very successful winners - you could say it has become the 'Oscars' of LBS applications," says Thomas Owen, Vice President, Wireless Business Development, deCarta. "I strongly recommend to the developers I work with to get involved in the LBS Challenge as this event creates a fantastic opportunity to meet other developers and see the other applications coming to market, some of whom may be potential collaboration opportunities.“

“Once again NAVTEQ has managed to surface some of the best LBS talent in North America through its Global LBS Challenge. We always look forward to these annual events, because they help Nokia stay on the pulse of the latest LBS trends while at the same time giving us the chance to evaluate new, innovative applications and determine which ones we could successfully take to market through Nokia’s distribution channels,” said Marc Kleinmaier, Business Development Manager, LBS, Nokia. “The LBS Challenge is an excellent breeding ground for sourcing new applications and has served Nokia well for a number of years.”

“As part of the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge, the Sony Ericsson Developer World team has been privileged to be involved in the judging of exciting, new and innovative location based applications. The breadth of applications has been impressive in all events so far,” says Vildan Hasanbegovic, Global Tools Product Manager, Sony Ericsson. ““We truly look forward to seeing more creative and ground breaking applications in the future from innovative developers of The Americas region.

More information

• http://www.lbschallenge.com/
• Read about the 14 semi-finalists and the official judges of LBS Challenge Americas>>