GPS BUSINESS NEWS

IDC: Smartphone Market Up 41.6% in First Quarter 2013

2013-04-29T21:32:00+02:00

On Friday Market research firm IDC said that smartphone vendors shipped 216.2 million units in the first quarter 2013, which marked the first time more than half (51.6%) the total phone shipments in a quarter were smartphones.

The market grew 41.6% compared to the 152.7 million units shipped in the same quarter the year before, but 5.1% lowe...

Volkswagen iBeetle: As Groundbreaking as a Phone Cradle

2013-04-24T13:00:00+02:00

Volkswagen announced on Monday at the Shanghai Auto Show they will be launching the iBeetle, i.e. “Two iconic products will be forming an alliance later this year: the iPhone from Apple and the Beetle from Volkswagen.“

While the PR stunt looks good on paper the reality is just an iPhone docking station and...

Indoor Loc Provider indoo.rs: "We Target Chipset, Handset Makers“

2013-04-15T16:25:00+02:00

A few weeks ago GPS Business News interviewed with Marcel van der Heijden, vice president business development EMEA at indoo.rs, an Austria-based provider of indoor location technologies.

Marcel van der Heijden is also a Partner in Speedinvest, a venture capital firm that invested in indoo.rs.

b[GPS Business News...

Local Business Search in the US: Winners and Losers

2013-04-11T21:53:00+02:00

Neustar Localeze and 15miles, helped by Comscore have published today the Sixth Annual comScore Local Search Usage Study that gives a wealth of details about the state of the customer usage in terms of local search. It also shows the winners and losers in this market.

It is very interesting to see the large use of Facebook for local searc...

Apple Acquires WIFISLAM As Indoor Location Market Continues to Evolve

2013-03-28T22:20:00+01:00

According to the Wall Street Journal, later confirmed by Apple itself, indoor location technology start-up WIFISLAM has been acquired by the Cupertino company. The price of the transaction is rumored to be in the range of $20 million. WIFISLAM was created in December 2010 and its technology first shown to the public in June 2011. The start-up...

Opel Embeds Apple’s Siri in Adam

2013-03-07T12:53:00+01:00

At the Geneva Motor Show this week Opel announced that its city car ADAM will be available with support for Siri, Apple’s voice recognition system, starting in April 2013.

Owners connect their iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 (iOS 6) with the IntelliLink infotainment system via Bluetooth, pair with the system, and use the steering wheel voice activatio...

ABI: Mobile Market Not A Duopole Yet, Win Phone & BB10 to Survive

2013-02-07T17:14:00+01:00

According to their latest report ABI Research estimates that there will be 45 million Windows Phone and 20 million BlackBerry 10 Smartphones in active use at the end of 2013.

“Despite of Apple’s and Google’s strong hold of the market, ABI Research anticipates that the future won’t be quite as duopolistic as it may seem now,“ said th...

JVC Debuts MirrorLink-Enabled In-car Head Units

2013-01-22T21:33:00+01:00

JVC Mobile Entertainment released today in the United States a range of multimedia in-car head units that integrates the MirrorLink technology that replicates smartphone content onto their screens.

JVC Receivers KW-NSX1, KW-NSX600, and KW-NSX700 are compatible with Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II (via the free Samsung Drive Link App...

CES: Demonstration of Siri Button on Future Hyundai Cars

2013-01-10T21:47:00+01:00

Smartphone Reaches 55% Mobile Users Penetration in EU5

2012-12-20T22:50:00+01:00

The latest MobiLens research from Comscore indicates that during the three month average period ending October 2012 smartphone average penetration in EU5 was 54.6 percent, up 13% year-on-year.

The EU5 (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain) smartphone audience has increased 35 percent in the past year, from 97.7 million in October 2011 to 131....

Google Maps iOS: 10m Downloads in 2 Days

2012-12-19T13:40:00+01:00

Google Maps for iPhone, which officially debuted on December 12, was downloaded more than 10 million times in 48 hours, according to a Google+ post by Jeff Huber, senior vice president, Commerce & Local at Google.

Google developed a strong marketing campaign for this product, not only relying on PR and word of mouth, but also directly runnin...

Google Mapping App Back on iOS

2012-12-17T18:58:00+01:00

Google today released its own mapping application for iOS 6, available for free on the App Store, which within hours found the top ranking spot in the free category on iTunes all over the world.

The app offers the well know Google maps data with vector maps as well as turn-by-turn navigation.

The new app is quite different from what Googl...

Nokia HERE for iOS: Great for Public Transports and More

2012-11-22T20:39:00+01:00

One of the missing features of the well known new version of Apple Maps is routing for pedestrian and public transports. The Nokia HERE app released this week for iOS is a great solution to that problem. Not only it offers to route the user from A to B via pedestrian paths and public transports but it can also display a public transpor...

Pole Star Deploys Indoor Positioning in French Museums, Airport

2012-10-23T18:48:00+02:00

French indoor positioning provider Pole Star today announced to be in the process of deploying their indoor positioning technologies at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Palais de la Découverte as well as Toulouse Airport. The indoor location deployment at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie and Palais de la Découverte includes all...

TomTom: Delisting Scenario Financed by Apple?

2012-10-15T17:38:00+02:00

According to Martijn den Drijver, Head of Equity Research at SNS Securities, there could be a mutually benefiting solution to Apple’s Map problem and TomTom’s low share value issue: a public to private transaction of the Dutch company in favour of its founders financed by Apple that would acquire TomTom map database. This scenario is looked in...