Italian location-based services provider UbiEst has announced an agreement with Turkish mobile operator Turkcell (36 million customers, over 50% market share) and ODIT A.S., a local LBS provider. Upon the terms of this contract, UbiNav, the off-board navigation solution developed by UbiEst will be locally rebranded Navsme and offered to International smartphone users travelling to Turkey. UbiEst is replacing Webraska which was the previous partner of ODIT A.S.
Local service and content are provided by ODIT A.S./Navsme, using digital map from NAVTEQ. Voice navigation and geo naming have been tailored for travelers and available in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.
“International customers roaming on the Turkcell network can now safely navigate with clear voice instructions in several languages. The service offers a complete set of 2D and 3D maps, directly onto mobile phones”, explained Altan Cingöz from Turkcell, Division Head of Interoperator Business.
Turkey was the seventh most visited holiday destination in the world in 2008 with 26.5 million travelers, which represent an interesting market for Turkcell. We can however suspect these travelers would prefer to buy an on-board solution that provide them visibility on how much they spend on navigation rather than waiting their return home to have the surprise of their data roaming consumption with such off-board solution.
