OpenStreetMap, le Wikipedia de la navigation !

Question pour Marcus Thielking fondateur de skobbler

Can you tell us about skobbler?

skobbbler is a Berlin-based company. We have two Apps in the App Store: skobbler navigation is an online-navigation-app. It's for anybody who wants to get from A to B without paying much money for reliable guidance and who does not want to use much storage capacity on their iPhone. More than 600.000 user have got the navigation since October 2009, most of them in Germany, the UK and the USA. In Germany it became one of the Top-10-Sellers of all apps in the store last year. ForeverMap is our second app. We just launched it a few weeks ago. It's a map app with including maps for all of Europe – so it's essentially similar to Google Maps, but it works offline. That means: No roaming-costs abroad and no network coverage issues. As you don't need a connection to the internet when looking at the map, even iPod touches and non-3G iPads are truly map-enabled for the first time. In Germany, ForeverMap went directly to the Top-10-sellers upon its launch.

How did you get the idea ?

skobbler is a spin-off of Navigon. In 2008, we believed that mobile phones are the natural platforms for any location-based service. That's why we took a small team and founded skobbler.

OpenStreetMap Can you explain?

OSM is a little bit like Wikipedia: Lot's of people sharing their knowledge and information and everybody can use it. As more and more people are getting part of OSM, the quality of the map increases more and more. The level of detail of OSM for big cities like Berlin or London is already better than at almost any other provider.

Do you think the offline use will become widespread in applications?

Online and Offline both have their advantages: If you are currently abroad, using an online app usually means high roaming-costs. That's why people love ForeverMap. On the other hand: If you just need an app for getting guidance in your home country and rather use the storage capacity of your device for music, pics or the likes, an online app is the right solution. That's why people love our navigation. I don't think that one concept is necessarily superior – it depends on your individual usecase.

What are your first practice? 

 We are very happy that skobbler and ForeverMap have been such huge successes. After all, it’s much more market traction than we anticipated.