BlueSky Positioning, a provider of A-GPS technology for the SIM card industry, has announced its partnership with global geo-coded landmark data provider Gecko Landmarks. The deal will provide mobile phone operators with the ability to offer advanced Location Based Services (LBSs) on A-GPS SIMs to customers with handsets that do not integrate GPS capabilities. BlueSky Positioning's technology, A-GPS SIM, said to be the world's first Assisted-GPS module for SIM cards, is claimed to locate the handset quickly, accurately and securely.
Risto Savolainen, Bluesky Positioning's CEO, commented, "Our partnership with Gecko Landmarks is an important strategic milestone to allow us to bring value-added LBS applications and services, using A-GPS SIM technology, to ordinary mobile and smart phone users. Gecko Landmarks' unique geo-coded point of interest and landmark data covers every country in the world and together with A-GPS SIM it can support a variety of applications such as tracking, finding friends or places of interest and games – wherever you are."
Gecko Landmarks' new and highly innovative global landmark data application is the culmination of several years of intense R&D work. Landmarks help users to locate their friends or points of interest using practical and easy to understand landmark identification. The landmark data is constantly updated and includes well-known local landmarks such as hotels, hospitals, shopping malls, restaurants, schools, major intersections and churches.
Pasi Riipinen, CEO of Gecko Landmarks, added, "While maps are useful, they're designed to be spread out across a table and not squashed digitally onto cellphones. Inside a small screen they're cumbersome and out of place, which is why carefully selected landmarks are easier to understand. Globally speaking, most people don't navigate using maps, but rather use locally known landmarks instead. Additionally, using landmark instead of traditional mapping techniques is far more accessible, as it is a common geographical language understood across the world."
BlueSky Positioning enabled Gecko Landmarks tracking will be available for A-GPS SIMs in the second half of 2009.