Waze, a mobile application that lets drivers contribute and use real-time traffic and road data, has launched in the iTunes App Store today.
The company, also known as waze, first launched in Israel early in 2009 and has become the leading traffic information provider in the country. This May the application became available in the Android Market for the United States. At the time I pointed out that the company had a much tougher market in the United States. Formidable competitors have names like TomTom, Google, Garmin and a variety of other providers of comprehensive real-time traffic information.
At the same time the service is akin to Open Street Map in the mapping sector. Despite large stuffs and huge budgets on the part of Tele Atlas, NAVTEQ and other companies, the free, crowdsourced OSM actually has better coverage in certain parts of the world. These days people love the idea of open source, free software and services–especially with so much mainstream media coverage of corporate corruption. It’s become somewhat of a business revolution (by that I’m referring to open source rather than corruption).
That said, it’s conceivable that people will actively contribute to waze if it means they’ll receive a competitive, yet free, service in the end.
The one problem that waze will have with the iPhone app is the lack of background processing. Without it, waze will have to be running at all times to work. But it’s not an entirely unlikely situation given that most drivers won’t be playing with other apps while driving. Hopefully anyways.
The company says it will announce waze availability for further mobile platforms in the near future.
