Low-cost software-as-a-service solution powers skobbler, catapulting it to #1 iPhone navigation app

March 15, 2010 — CloudMade, the platform and tools company serving consumers, mappers, developers and advertisers around the world, has announced the release of Navi Studio, a powerful suite of products designed to help developers create compelling turn-by-turn navigation applications with detailed community-generated maps.

Navi Studio provides the core mapping services and software components that developers, mobile operators and handset manufacturers need, when they build turn-by-turn navigation into their applications and handsets.

Early Navi Studio partner skobbler, a spin-off of premium-navigation provider Navigon, released its Navi Studio-based navigation app to Apple’s App store and within 24 hours, it topped the sales charts. In the German App Store, it was first in the navigation category, second in overall gross revenue across all apps (above TomTom, which sells for 69.99 Euros) and second in overall sales across all apps.

The groundbreaking skobbler app, which currently sells for 2.99 Euros, is the first turn-by-turn navigation app to incorporate user editable maps and to switch from Navteq maps to using CloudMade’s Navi Studio product. The app offers a high quality user experience, with engaging 2.5D graphics, voice guided turn-by-turn directions, night/day modes, in-app iPod playback and bookmarks for favorite destinations.

“We’re extremely pleased with the high demand for our app and give credit to CloudMade’s Navi Studio product and mapping platform, for helping us achieve this success,” said Peter Scheufen, CEO of skobbler. “We switched from using Navteq maps so we could provide more interaction with our users and give them a map which they could edit and update themselves. In the not too distant future, we see OpenStreetMap surpassing the legacy map suppliers in terms of quality and detail, as its vast community continues to map everything in their neighborhoods.”

“We congratulate skobbler on the run-away success of their navigation app and invite other developers both large and small to follow in their footsteps” said Juha Christensen, Chairman and CEO of CloudMade. ”Navi Studio gives developers the freedom to innovate with turn-by-turn navigation in any type of app, not just car navigation. By using community-powered maps, developers and their customers now have the opportunity to join a global movement to map the world and enjoy more accurate navigation experiences.”

Changes to roads and the location of people’s businesses occur on a daily basis. Legacy map-making companies work on a 12-24 month turnaround time to deliver new datasets to their customers, by which time the data is already out of date. By using CloudMade’s map, which leverages OpenStreetMap, skobbler’s users join a 230,000-strong community of mappers who maintain the map, looking for and correcting errors. CloudMade ensures that skobbler’s navigation app gets updated maps every day.

How Map Error Correction Works

If a user spots an inaccuracy in the map while using skobbler – for example, a blocked road or incorrect address – they can simply correct the error by using CloudMade’s Mapzen web editor. To do this, users simply go to http://mapzen.cloudmade.com/, sign up for an account, locate the error in the map and start correcting or adding new content to the map.

The Map

CloudMade offers commercial-grade maps that leverage OpenStreetMap and a number of other sources. CloudMade provides guaranteed uptimes and vector based map tiles for smooth, real-time map delivery. Known as the ‘Wikipedia of maps’, OpenStreetMap (OSM) allows its users to alter the map or add completely new components like streets, tracks or buildings. OSM’s exponential development is vividly illustrated by its contributor figures: having relied on a mere 10,000 mappers worldwide in early 2008, by the end of 2010, predictions see this figure exceeding 1,000,000, five hundred times larger than the number of employees at the largest map supplier.

Developers wishing to find out more about CloudMade’s Navi Studio suite can visit http://bit.ly/cagWei

skobbler can be downloaded from the German Apple App store here: http://bit.ly/c32OnJ