NAVTEQ reveals the EMEA winners of 2010 Global LBS Challenge®

Mobilizy GmbH takes the top prize with Wikitude Drive and receives €35,000 in cash as well as €560,000 worth of data, tool licenses and services

At an awards ceremony in Barcelona, Spain last night for the 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge®, NAVTEQ announced that Mobilizy is the Grand Prize Winner of the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) edition the competition. Austrian-based Mobilizy Gmbh won with their mobile LBS application, Wikitude Drive, which is a turn-by-turn navigation system based on NAVTEQ® maps that utilizes an augmented reality camera mode and text-to-speech instructions. Mobilizy was the top winner over eleven other finalists who were each evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges comprised of executives from leading wireless and technology companies.

Two Runners-Up were also selected by the judging panel:

First Runner-Up: Mobitee, France – Mobitee is a GPS golf assistant that allows you to find the nearest golf course, follow route guidance via NAVTEQ maps, know the distance to each green and calculate your score.

Second Runner-Up: M2Mobi, The Netherlands – Nulaz is a social information source that allows you to see where people, places and events are located around you.

The Grand Prize Winner for EMEA as well as First and Second Runners-Up received over $2 million US (€1.4 million) worth of prizes combined from NAVTEQ and sponsors in addition to an opportunity for worldwide exposure for their LBS applications.

In addition to the overall winners, special recognition awards were presented by NAVTEQ for outstanding achievements in specific categories:

• Best Use of Location-Based Advertising: Telmap™, Israel with Telmap5
• Best Touch User Interface (UI) Application: ZorroGPS®, China with ZorroGPS Live
• Best API Creation: Mobilizy GmbH, Austria with Wikitude Drive

Special recognition awards were also presented for outstanding achievements by Global LBS Challenge sponsors. Mobitee won two sponsor-awarded recognitions including:

• Best App for Use of Tanla License Manager, selected by global sponsor Tanla, and
• Most Innovative Use of Graphics, selected by global award sponsor Imagination Technologies.

“We have seen mobile applications, and specifically, location-enabled solutions, play an increasingly important role with consumers and businesses,” expressed Jeff Mize, executive vice president, Global Sales, NAVTEQ. “The quality of judges and sponsors, who are a part of this year’s Global LBS Challenge, reinforces the interest in location-based solutions and we look forward to continued diversification of applications in the LBS space.”

Interested in participating in the competition yourself? There are still two regions open for registration – South America and Asia Pacific – see http://www.lbschallenge.com/ for more details.