German mobile navigation provider Skobbler released last week on the German iTune App Store their new turn-by-turn navigation application powered by user-generated maps from OpenStreetMap (OSM).

The application sells for €2.99 and has been quite a success in terms of downloads, but it has so far gathered mixed reviews from the first users with slightly more one star that four star ratings. There seems to have a high number of complaints about map inaccuracies, especially on highway access ramps as well as on the time needed to recalculate a route after a missed turn.

But Skobbler remains quite optimistic about that. “We're aware that OSM itself has a way to go before being capable of true premium navigation” said Skobbler co-founder Marcus Thielking in an email to GPS Business News. “With that in mind, we're actually baffled by both success and acceptance of our first OSM-based version up to this point. It seems that even many mainstream customers buy into the underlying concepts of OSM and value both our transparency (e.g. the blog communication) as well as our efforts aimed at helping to boost the further development of the OpenStreetMap (e.g. the backchannel in our application).”

Another problem for Skobbler is that Germany is by far the most advanced country in term of OSM coverage. This means that even if map inaccuracies are overcome in that country, scaling their solution in the rest of Europe - and beyond - is unlikely to happen at this stage.

Last but not least the iPhone is exclusively sold by wireless operator T-mobile in Germany which just announced last week a free navigation offering with a basic version of the NAVIGON software and on-board NAVTEQ map data.

CloudMade Navi Studio
The new Skobbler application was built on Navi Studio from CloudMade, a U.S. company that provides a LBS platform that supports OSM data. Navi Studio integrates a navigation engine, a vector map streaming server, local search and address geocoding.

“We congratulate Skobbler on the run-away success of their navigation app and invite other developers both large and small to follow in their footsteps,” stated Juha Christensen, Chairman and CEO of CloudMade.