Turn By Turn

In AtlasBook Version 4, NIM adds traffic information as a valuable part of its navigation and mapping features, giving users easy access to useful traffic information such as upcoming traffic incidents and congestion spots, as well as expected traffic flow and travel delay. This gives you a good estimate of travel time so you know when to leave and about when you’ll arrive. Traffic information also gives you opportunities to reroute around potentially high-traffic pockets.

Working with traffic data providers, NIM was able to make use of historical and real-time traffic data to make these features work. But, as is NIM’s custom, the question was asked, how could we make this traffic feature better, more accurate, more timely? The more accurate your traffic information, the more you can trust your navigator’s routes and estimated time of arrival. And as a navigation provider, NIM’s business is all about building that trust with its users.

So, in answer to the question of how NIM can improve the usefulness of traffic data, NIM made a bold technology move and acquired TrafficGauge, a leading provider of real-time traffic information. The idea behind this acquisition is not only to add valuable technology to NIM’s NAVBuilder navigation platform and add expertise to NIM’s technology team but to raise the bar of traffic data.

What’s the matter with traffic data? Well, today’s real-time traffic data relies upon traffic sensors that are embedded into major roads in major cities. The catch is in the accuracy of the traffic sensors and their coverage. Sensors could be damaged or missing from the roads of interest to a user. To account for this, historical data is used to supplement this data in order to provide nationwide coverage.

Traffic data of the not-so-distant-future, on the other hand, will rely more heavily on traffic probes, which refers to the anonymous data aggregation of actual users’ location, speed and direction of travel. This would ideally cover all roads at all times. The catch with traffic probes is that the accuracy is directly related to the number of traffic probes. That’s where NIM comes in.

Given that NIM’s AtlasBook platform continuously services the largest number of navigation sessions in the United States with the largest user base, NIM’s NAVBuilder platform is uniquely poised for using this information to create a real-time, accurate database of traffic congestion and flow nationwide, including cities and roads that would not typically have installed sensors. In the next generation of NIM’s innovative Traffic Sharing System, every driver using NIM’s navigation service will help generate “traffic sharing” information, which will result in improved traffic accuracy.

With this traffic technology, the accuracy of traffic data is in the driver’s hands, literally.

By now we’re all familiar with navigation applications on mobile devices, PND’s, and desktops. Typically it’s the person using the navigation application that does the following – of directions, that is. These days, however, there’s been a paradigm shift where navigation applications are adapting to people’s lifestyles and supplying above and beyond pure navigation information. Real-time, or live, content such as weather and local movies and showtimes has now become a high-demand feature, along with ways of streamlining application use such as voice input.

NIM is showcasing its answer to this demand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain next week. In its latest releases NIM’s AtlasBook Navigator features user favorites such as traffic updates and alerts, place messaging (a social networking feature), movies, local events, weather, and gas prices. Also featured are new capabilities such as ASR voice input for easy local searches, global support across various new smart devices, advanced pedestrian mode, speed cameras, and extensive public transit information. Navigators are no longer just for getting from point A to point B, and when used in everyday situations, these systems can really benefit people’s on-the-go lifestyles.

As consumers want more than just navigation, mobile operators have responded by offering customers their own suite of LBS applications. Historically this effort has been costly and complex for carriers who had to start from scratch with vendor identification, technology selection, application design, etc. Through working with carriers worldwide, NIM has created a recipe for success with simplified navigation deployments that have a proven track record of 3 million-plus paid subscribers and counting. As I discussed in an earlier post, one way to facilitate new launches is through a platform partnership. A Wall Street Journal article today announced such a partnership between Ericsson and NIM that will deliver valuable LBS applications to both new and existing Ericsson partner operators. The goal is to make it turn-key easy for carriers to launch navigation applications with an all-in-one approach, delivering both platform and application.

Now that carriers see the demand for people-centric applications such as live content search and navigation, carriers are aiming to increase data applications to replace revenue lost from decreasing voice plan sales by offering must-have features and experiences to users on a daily basis. The trick is to make it easy to use and sticky for users as well as easy to launch and profitable for carriers. Now that’s a win-win situation.