Mobile Distillery, which specialises in Java and BREW mobile application development and automated porting software, has announced a partnership with Mappy, the European location-based services (LBS) company. The two companies plan to jointly develop a specific Application Programming Interface (API) to drive the creation of mobile LBS applications built using Mobile Distillerys next-generation development and automatic porting platform: Celsius v5.
A recent report by Morgan Stanley predicted that by 2009, 10-15% of new mobile devices launched in Europe will be GPS-enabled. Worldwide, it predicted a figure of 15-20%, rising to over 50% within five years., offering a huge opportunity for companies to create innovative applications and services which make use of LBS technology.
Integration with the new Mappy mobile API will allow mobile application developers to easily access features of the Mappy platform, in addition to those already supported by Celsius v5, including near field communication (NFC) and Bluetooth. Mappy features include geocoding, mapping and routing, referencing specific points of interest, and proximity search. Through the partnership, developers and publishers using Celsius v5 will be able to easily combine positioning technologies (such as cell-ID and GPS) with LBS features, while ensuring that their mobile applications are launched faster, for a lower cost, across potentially more than 1,000 different makes and models of mobile phones.
Mobile Distillery notes that its Celsius v5 development and automated porting software solution simplifies and accelerates the production cycle of mobile application, allowing developers to create hundreds of individually-optimized mobile applications in a few clicks, from a single set of source code. The level of automation offered by Celsius v5 is a unique advantage for developers, the company says, as it abstracts the process of creating applications from the logistical nightmare of porting to every different handset on the market reducing the development phase by 30% and the time to port and backfill by up to 80%. This means that developers can concentrate on developing their mobile applications, without needing to know which devices support what features, and without being expert in high-level connectivity APIs. Celsius is built on an open, plug-and-play architecture, allowing developers to tailor the solution to their needs and build in their own expertise.
Mobile Distillery Business Development Manager, Franois-Joseph Viallon, says the partnership demonstrates how two companies can collaborate to help their customers compete in an emerging market.
Were essentially combining our market leading intelligence to build the API that will take Mappys 20 years of expertise and provide it on a platform that means it can be deployed to the market faster, and without the technical headaches that developers often face with new technologies, says Viallon. This partnership is another example of how the open and plug-and-play architecture of Celsius can benefit our clients to easily develop innovative mobile applications.
The Mappy API will be released in October 2008, with new features to be continuously developed and added.