SiRF Technology Holdings announced a partnership with Openwave Systems to bring location-based capabilities to Web 2.0 mobile applications. The companies will work together to integrate SiRF's SiRFstudio location capabilities with Openwave MIDAS, a Mobile AJAX-based application development platform, enabling wireless operators, content publishers and software developers to use location-based features when creating mobile widgets, rich data services and online idle screen user interfaces on mobile devices. SiRF Technology and Openwave plan to jointly market the combined solution globally to wireless operators and handset manufacturers.

"A key part of creating mobile services with a highly targeted and personalized experience is knowing where subscribers are, and the integration of the SiRFstudio APIs with MIDAS is designed to bring high-accuracy location technology within the reach of content publishers and developers," said Nara Rajagopalan, vice president of products, Openwave. "When combined with other existing content feeds and services in addition to other applications, location adds the geographic dimension and filtering needed to create compelling and highly relevant mobile data services that can drive Web content consumption on mobile devices."

Openwave's location-enabled MIDAS application development platform is designed to offer developers easy access to a range of powerful location functionality, from location determination to mapping and routing, allowing developers to speed up the development of location-aware applications. The Openwave MIDAS application development environment also includes tools to create idle-screen widgets and a framework for widget discovery, delivery and lifecycle management. Openwave MIDAS is designed to run on Windows Mobile, Symbian, BREW, QTopia, Linux and any feature phone platform.

SiRFstudio provides a rapid location-based application development platform that allows software developers to embed sophisticated location capabilities into applications or services. SiRFstudio is part of the SiRFecosystem, a suite of tools and resources to speed development, testing and marketing of location-based applications.