LOCATION intelligence solutions company Spime plans to launch a numbers of products in the first quarter of 2008, aiming to boost sales by cashing in on the growing market for mobile navigation.

Based in the US with a development centre in Chennai, Spime will introduce by March Symbian and Java version of its run by turn navigation application which has been already been launched on the Windows mobile platform, CEO and founder Shankar Narayanan told ET.

An onboard version will be launched at the 3GSM Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. Onboard solution contains map data stored in the handset while offboard services are provided by map stored in server. Spime, which has started in 2006, hopes to end 2008 with a $10million topline and expects turnover to touch$70 million-$80 million by 2011.Industry estimates see 240 million smart phones being shipped in 2008and 600 million by 2011-12.

The company has just licensed its SUPL mobile handset clients to two of the world's leading GPS chip manufacturers. SUPL is a global standard which enables GPS data to be exchanged between all mobile networks.” As the only independent SUPL client provider to these chip makers, we have already received the license fee and will start receiving the royalty once the chips start being shipped out,” he said.

Spime has also developed widget frameworks for micro application and social networking applications, linking it to native ones such as the Outlook Calendar, Address book or To-do-List.” We have taken care of all privacy and security attributes seriously, so that the location information of a consumer is not revealed to any one at any time.”

The company is now focused on addressing the needs of both onboard and offboard navigation, he said. The US market is predominantly offboard because it is controlled by mobile service provider who decides what application can go into phone, unlike in most other part of the world. Onboard navigation is popular in Europe.

“We have architectured a whole platform and offerings that are compactable with GPS.WiFi,WiMax,RFiD and all type of sensor signals,”. Mr. Narayanan said.

Spime's partners include GSP chipmaker SiRF, map engine provider decarte, map data provider Tele Atlas, SUPL server company TeleCommunication Systems and Microsoft. Starting with just five professionals, Spime now has over 30 personnel, and expects staff members to rise over to over 100 by the end of 2008.