On the application developer side we have signed up about 80% of the players: Telmap, ALK, Appello, Networks in Motion, Navigon, Jentro, Webraska, Route66 and I certainly forgot some of them. What I think is that there are still business models to be invented for location-based applications. The market is still in its early stage looking at the different options. And what these partners say is that we are more creative on that particular point than our competitors.

On the wireless operator side, we are starting to have a good understanding of how they work. What they are looking at today is to retain some value in the LBS chain. Therefore they are interested in white label solutions. With them we position ourselves like a service provider rather than a map provider. Because the software providers are likely to be small companies in this industry, we try to federate this offer in a meaningful way for wireless operators.

GPS BN: In Europe there are two particular types of content you are currently working on the top of the in-car navigation map: one is map attributes for pedestrians, what you call “Discover Cities”, the other one is traffic information. Can you update us about developments in these areas?
SB: Sure. Discover Cities is a particular set of map data which is focused towards pedestrian navigation. We integrate many attributes which are relevant to pedestrian such as sidewalks, stairs, taxis stands, public transports, etc… We are expecting to cover 44 cities by the end of the year in Europe. Because it is a pedestrian centric product today our customers are mainly in the wireless space.

Regarding Traffic information we think there is a demand for a pan-European solution which is a natural extension of what we are currently doing in North America.

GPS BN: OK, but so far you have only announced a partnership with Telefonica to cover Spain. In the meantime TomTom has covered a large part of Western Europe with its solution and INRIX has partnered with ARC Transistance. Don’t you think you are a bit late on that market?
SB: At this stage I am not able to give you the specifics about our plans. The “when” and the “how” will be known later. What is sure is that we have many options: acquisitions, partnerships, or using our North American know-how or even a combination of everything. To be honest I don’t think we are late and I think we can really come up with something very good. For example, leveraging Nokia devices for probe data would be pretty unique.

GPS BN: Serge Bussat, thank you very much.
SB: You are most welcome.