Nokia NAVTEQ buys Reach Unlimited, acquires crowdsourcing "TRAPSTER" (and other apps)

You may have heard the snippet from Reuters about Nokia NAVTEQ acquiring Trapser. Trapster is a cross platform app that enables crowd sourcing, allowing it’s current 9.4 million users to share traffic/speed trap cameras/road hazards data. Currently, over 3.5 Million traps have been reported.

According to Autoblog, five companies were interested in acquiring Trapster, resulting in a bidding war amongst the top three. Well we know how that ended.

If you’re a Trapster user, your service apparently should remain. But for users of NAVTEQ products (e.g. Ovi Maps) expect integration of traffic, road hazard and police data stands to increase.

Nokia’s Marko Ahtisaari noted the importance of crowd sourcing data, saying competitive OSes need to harness the collective intelligence of their users – something they are doing with Ovi Maps right now (e.g. if people are taking routes on roads that aren’t displayed on maps, though I’m not sure if we have such active/manual crowd sourcing participation)

Nokia’s making some head way with improving Ovi Maps experience. Recently it has acquired 3D mapping specialists, PixelActive.

According to Moconews, Reach Unlimited Corporation (developer of Trapser) also develops some other apps including

JotYou – location aware and alarmed set tasks/reminds that go off after passing specific locations

AwareSpot – location based text alerts from “trusted sources” e.g. police, media outlets, friends and family.

Sources: Moconews.net / Autoblog / David

Tags: Navteq, Ovi Maps, TRAPSTER

Category: Nokia