HELSINKI, Finland and EMERYVILLE, Calif., Feb. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Nokia, a world leader in mobile communications, and WaveMarket, a pioneer in location- based services, have entered into collaboration to offer location-based tracking services to carriers worldwide.
This OEM and reseller agreement will bring WaveMarket's entire product suite to Nokia customers across the globe. WaveMarket has developed best-of- breed applications for both businesses and consumers, including family safety, pet tracking, enterprise tracking, mobile location dating, mobile locations searches and StreetHive -- a friend-finding and social networking application.
Nokia will also integrate WaveMarket's patented WaveAlert technology into its iGMLC network infrastructure. The first Nokia LBS application based on WaveMarket's technology is Nokia LBS Push, launched at the 3GSM World Congress.
WaveMarket's WaveAlert is the only platform offering active, as opposed to passive, alerting for increased location accuracy. For the first time, users can be notified when they are near something important to them, like a good friend who happens to be in their neighborhood, and carriers have a platform that solves the tremendous technical challenges required for alerting services. With patented algorithms that predict the location of all tracked assets in the network in real time, WaveAlert improves the performance of alerting applications by actively requesting location information from the user's handset. In addition to dramatically reducing location polling rates and solving the problems associated with launching alert-based LBS, WaveAlert also reduces network costs.
"We are eager to integrate WaveMarket's product suite into our infrastructure," said Heikki Hemmi, Director Location Business Nokia Networks. "As location-based services gain momentum in the mobile device community, Nokia is dedicated to providing an innovative variety of tracking and location solutions for each demographic market. We believe this feature-rich suite of location-based applications will appeal to a wide range of consumers."
"Collaboration with Nokia will leverage and expand WaveMarket's current global presence," said Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of WaveMarket. "We are pleased to be working with an industry leader such as Nokia. With this agreement Nokia will be able to provide its system customers with our quality location-based services for both business and consumers."
About Nokia
About WaveMarket
WaveMarket Inc. is a world leader in location-based services and pioneered the first carrier-grade family location service. The company's software product suite includes solutions that range from family finder services to mobile social networking -- all built upon WaveMarket's patent-pending WaveAlert platform, which powers client-side alerts using technology that reduces carrier infrastructure costs by more than 90% when compared to other LBS platforms. Marketing to mobile carriers in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia, WaveMarket's customers include top tier carriers Sprint Nextel, Cingular, Bell Mobility of Canada, and SK Telecom, Korea's leading wireless carrier and Vivo, Brazil's largest operator. Headquartered in Emeryville, CA, WaveMarket also has international offices in Brazil and Canada. Founded in 2000, the company is financed by a group that includes Draper Fisher Jurvetson, QUALCOMM Ventures, BlueRun Ventures (formerly Nokia Venture Partners), Intel Capital, and Mitsui Ventures.
WaveMarket Inc.
