Telenav, Inc reported that has acquired skobbler, a navigation app company with the highly rated OpenStreetMap (OSM)-based GPS navigation apps. This could make Telenav maps faster to upgrade than Google maps.
The founder of OSM, Steve Coast, who joined Telenav last year.
Telenav plans to offer Scout with OSM for much of the world. We have already made significant headway toward this goal in the U.S., including using OSM for our HTML5 version of Scout.
OSM is the only crowd-sourced and open-sourced map of the globe and, for many developers, it has become a clear alternative to Google Maps with data contributed by Waze but owned by Google.
OpenStreetMap is different. All of the data contributed is openly available — for anyone to download
Since Coast founded OSM, the community has doubled year over year to more than 1.5 million registered editors, becoming a global community of local editors in every corner of the world. Crowd-sourced, it publishes edits every minute on openstreetmap.org, resulting in maps that are detailed and up to date.
Newly-laid streets and newly-developed areas can be updated on a regular basis and in real time. In addition, OSM allows for greater map detail for pedestrians such as alleys, sidewalks, parks, hiking trails, zoos, and even city trees.
With offices in Germany and Romania, skobbler was the first company to launch a commercial navigation app using OSM (in 2010) for both Android and iOS devices and is available in app stores in 49 regions with worldwide map coverage.
Skobbler developed sophisticated algorithms that evolved OSM data from a display map to a navigable map.
skobbler’s apps are top ranked in many countries.
skobbler’s CEO, Peter Scheufen, previously served as the CEO of Navigon, which became a leading GPS device manufacturer in Europe and was eventually purchased by Garmin. Telenav expects that all skobbler employees will join Telenav as part of its OSM team, bringing significant industry-leading software expertise in location-based services, navigation and mapping.
The sale closed on January 29, 2014 for consideration of approximately $19.2 million in cash and $4.6 million of Company common stock.
Skobbler offers offline navigation for Android and iPhone for $1.00 saving many data bills on Android devices.