US-BASAED Spime, which works on platform to identify and track locations, believes that the third-generation (3G) mobile services policy, recently announced by the government, would help the company pump in more services at a faster rate.

Though the company’s products are primarily targeted at the Europe and US markets, there’s an increasing interest from service providers in India, its CEO and founder Shankar Narayanan said. “In the last 6 months, there have been enquiries from India in the GPS (global positioning system), social network and navigation-related issues. If I can move users from the computer to mobile phone, the success rate is going to be higher,”Mr Narayanan said.

Spime designs products in location intelligence and mobile navigation. For example, the company’s navigation tool gives the user information about where a place is located and the taken for the travel based on the traffic conditions at that hour using its historic data. Now, suppose the user reaches the location well before his appointment, the navigation tool will put out a list of events happening in the vicinity to keep the user occupied.

“The tool connected to social networks also tell you if any of your friends are in the vicinity. The messages will go to like-minded similar people who don’t live more than 6 miles away,” Mr Narayanan said.

Apart from application centered in mobile navigation, the company is also working in the area of mobile commerce consumer solution and has signed up with an operator for this services.”cell phones will become a personal device ten years from now. In Japan cell phones are now used as credit cards and personal identification,” Mr Narayanan said.

In terms of navigation tools, the company sees prospects in hybrid navigation- a combination of onboard and off board navigation.
In the case of onboard, the data relating to the map and data is stored in the handset but in the case of off board, the service provider controls over the type of service provider control the devices and have more authority over the type of services that go into a mobile phone. While the Indian market is an example of onboard is the norm in US.

At the same time, the handsets used also dictate the kind of features that can be provided by Spime.”World over and in India, the smart phone market is growing at a rapid pace. By 2010, they will constitute 30% now,” Mr. Narayanan said.

Spime earns revenue from its products a combination of NRE and royalty. NRE or non-recurring engineering is a one-time payment and testing a new product.

Its customers include original equipment manufacturers, chipmakers, service providers and social networking companies.