WHERE, the award-winning location-based service application from uLocate Communications, announces today that its long-standing partnership with Sprint® (NYSE: S) will now include powering a location-enabled WAP service on data-enabled Sprint phones.
WHERE is one of the most popular location-based applications in the mobile industry, connecting consumers with information about the local area. With access to network-based location on the Sprint network, WHERE provides nearby search results, even on non GPS-enabled devices, without requiring users to report their location. Sprint users can now browse to WHERE (m.where.com) on their phone’s Web browser and easily find locally relevant information from AccuWeather to ZipCar.
The new WHERE WAP service builds on Sprint’s leadership in providing GPS services and four-year relationship with uLocate. Sprint was the first U.S. carrier to launch the downloadable WHERE application in 2007. WHERE allows consumers to quickly launch a personalized mobile experience that uses GPS location to put the people, places and things they look for at their fingertips.
“Location-enabled content is one of the critical categories in mobile,” said Greg Sterling, Senior Analyst, Opus Research. “Aggregating valuable local information from a range of sources in a single destination, the new WHERE mobile Web site should prove to be a very popular service.”
This announcement further expands WHERE’s already significant penetration of the marketplace, which has recently been deepened through two highly successful new product releases. Last month, WHERE launched on the Android powered T-Mobile G1 and released a new product for the BlackBerry Storm. Both new applications fully optimize the features of these innovative touch-screen devices. In addition to standard WHERE local content available such as Yelp, Eventful, Starbucks, Weather and Gas Prices, these versions include several new features: Movies, Traffic, Headlines, and the WHERE Wall.
The new WHERE application for the G1 has acquired over 50,000 new users since its launch. Within the first twenty-four hours, the application attracted over 16,000 new users and had risen to the top of the Travel category and 40th overall by popularity in the Android Market. WHERE is currently being featured on the Android Market and Android Market website.
Specifically designed for the BlackBerry Storm, the new WHERE application fully optimizes the native features of the device, such as Blackberry Maps API, in order to provide a sleek user interface and very fast performance. The application was downloaded over 7,500 times within the first twenty-four hours.
