Wikitude Drive is the Grand Champion at Navteq Challenge 2010!

February 15, 2010 in Blog, News 2 Comments

Last night NAVTEQ announced at an award ceremony that Mobilizy is the Grand Prize Winner of the 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge®. Austrian-based Mobilizy Gmbh (www.mobilizy.com) 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.

Special Recognition Awards

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 -  Telmap5
Best Touch User Interface (UI) Application: ZorroGPS®, China – ZorroGPS Live
Best API Creation: Mobilizy GmbH, Austria – Wikitude Drive

Read more about it here.

“Wikitude Drive is surely a prime example of disruptive technology. It is a light-weight navigation system which takes a different approach than all the other navigation systems: You see the real street on your mobile phone, instead of 2D or 3D maps.  Wikitude Drive integrates natively with our core product Wikitude World Browser, which gives you access to millions of POIs and your favorite travel guides like Lonely Planet, as well as gives Wikitude World Browser a link to a light-weight navigation system. There is a lot of room to grow in this area when you imagine the possibilities by having access to the huge number of mobile services and points of interest that are already available on mobile devices. Imagine driving by virtual bill boards of your favorite fast food chain, or simply having an alert when one of them is nearby. This is going to happen within Wikitude Drive. The Wikitude platform offers numerous opportunities for monetization. To mention only two: Wikitude Drive and Wikitude World Browser offer a fantastic base to sell premium content or to display location based ads.” – Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, CEO of Mobilizy.

“Born out of our curiosity to see if the Wikitude framework would also work for navigation, it started as a shaky proof-of-concept and became a sincere example for disruptive technology. We won a once-in-a-lifetime prize, a check physically the size of towel, with a nice number printed on it. We are looking forward to working together with Navteq and Navteq’s partners in the coming months. The mission is to make the most out of this opportunity.” – Andreas Hauser, Wikitude Product Manager.

Read “The Inside Story”