Every week the Opus team picks a news story or topic or idea that is relevant to the entrepreneurs and businesses we partner with.

RSS Feed

Archives

OpenStreetMap gets a fillip

Ajit Deshpande - - 0 Comments

Last week, mobile GPS-based mapping player Telenav announced that it had purchased OpenStreetMap (OSM) based mapping app developer Skobbler for approximately $24 million. Based in Germany, Skobbler is the top-rated OSM-based navigation app at this time. This move by Telenav unites Skobbler’s strong team with OSM founder Steve Coast who joined Telenav from Microsoft in 2013.  OSM itself is a 10 year old project that currently more than 1.5 million individuals contribute towards, to continually build and enhance an editable global map. Recently, it has been adopted by apps such as Foursquare.

As of today, mapping data comes from four key sources: Google, TomTom, Navteq (part of Nokia), and OSM. Navigation apps use this data across three broad categories – web and mobile mapping which sees players such as Google Maps, Waze, Telenav (Scout mobile app which uses Navteq) and Apple Maps (based on TomTom); automotive mapping which is dominated by Navteq, Garmin (based on Navteq) and TomTom; and the consumer GPS device segment where Garmin dominates. Of the mapping data providers, clearly, the only one with any chance at competing with Google is OSM and its crowd-sourced, open-source approach. Now, with Steve Coast and the Skobbler team on board, Telenav becomes the first major GPS mapping player to formally ‘get behind the crowd’. This should likely cause some introspection at Google, and even more so at Apple and Nokia.

While Skobbler clearly wasn’t a big exit, it does further prove the validity of a crowd-sourcing focused business model, following in the footsteps of Waze. As for Telenav, in theory it now has the resources to build an OSM-based competitor to Waze. Could the Telenav leverage these resources to obtain a billion dollar outcome for itself? Now that depends on execution (and potential acquirer Apple as well).

« Back to Blog
Also on the Opus Blog

Shopify extends its reach!

September 5, 2013
Ajit Deshpande - Shopify, one of the leading providers of online storefronts and payment processing solutions for retailers, last week introduced its own iPad-based  point-of-sale (POS) system for...

Isis and the banks!

February 12, 2014
Ajit Deshpande - Contactless mobile payment technology has been around for almost a decade now, but has not yet become main-stream in the United States. Isis, the joint mobile wallet initiative...

Targeting vs Retargeting on Facebook

February 27, 2013
Ajit Deshpande - Last week, web retargeting firm AdRoll released an infographic comparing traditional web retargeting to retargeting on Facebook Exchange (FBX). AdRoll was one of a handful of...

Dropbox gets Mailbox

March 19, 2013
Ajit Deshpande - Last week, cloud-based file storage leader Dropbox announced its acquisition of Mailbox, an iOS email management app created by a 14-person startup named Orchestra. Orchestra was...